


Beasts who linger.

by Bad_Dreems, Mz_Mere (Gelasia_Kidd)



Series: Dreamer's End [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Gen, Gun Violence, Happy ending in a later book, Horror, LEVEL OF VIOLENCE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2020-08-20 10:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bad_Dreems/pseuds/Bad_Dreems, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gelasia_Kidd/pseuds/Mz_Mere
Summary: Yᴏᴜ’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴀ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇ.A ʟɪғᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴇғᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴛᴀᴋᴇBᴜᴛ ᴡʜᴏ ᴡɪʟʟ sᴛᴀʏ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʀ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄʀɪᴇsIɴ ᴛʜɪs sᴛᴏɴᴇ ᴛᴏᴍʙ ᴛʜᴇʏ’ᴠᴇ ғɪʟʟᴇᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʟɪᴇsᴬ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍ ᶦˢ ᵘⁿʳᵉᵈʳᵉˢˢᵉᵈ ʷʰᵉⁿ ʳᵉᵗʳᶦᵇᵘᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᵒᵛᵉʳᵗᵃᵏᵉˢ ᶦᵗˢ ʳᵉᵈʳᵉˢˢᵉʳBₐₕ, Bₐₕ, ₐ ᵦₗₐ𝒸ₖ ₛₕₑₑₚ,ₕₐᵥₑ ᵧₒᵤ ₐₙᵧ 𝓌ₒₒₗ?Yₑₛ ₘₑᵣᵣᵧ ₕₐᵥₑ ᵢ,ₜₕᵣₑₑ ᵦₐ𝓰ₛ 𝒻ᵤₗₗ,"Iᴛ ɪs ғᴀʀᴛʜᴇʀ ᴏɴ," sᴀɪᴅ I; "ʙᴜᴛ ᴏʙsᴇʀᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡʜɪᴛᴇ ᴡᴇʙ-ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ɢʟᴇᴀᴍs ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ ᴄᴀᴠᴇʀɴ ᴡᴀʟʟs."ₜ𝓌ₒ 𝒻ₒᵣ ₘᵧ ₘₐₛₜₑᵣ,ₒₙₑ 𝒻ₒᵣ ₘᵧ 𝒹ₐₘₑ,"Cᴏᴍᴇ, ʟᴇᴛ ᴜs ɢᴏ."ᴺᵒⁿᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᶦᵗᵗˡᵉ ᵇᵒʸᵀʰᵃᵗ ᶜʳᶦᵉˢ ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵃⁿᵉ"ₐₛₕₑₛ, ₐₛₕₑₛ"Wₑ ₐₗₗ 𝒻ₐₗₗ 𝒹ₒ𝓌ₙ





	1. They always leave me...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> !NullReferenceException!: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.  
Object.Protagonist
> 
> If (HasGreatestDT)  
Get.Protagonist.  
Else...]
> 
> 12:00:00  
11:59:59  
11:59:58  
...

That noise. That  _ terrible  _ noise… How it sunk so far into this place, such a lonely and recognizable sound even in this state of hampered awareness. 

** _“Go. To. Hell.”_ **

When the sound of thunder finally stopped and the dust settled: it wasn’t utter nothingness that took over, something reached deep into its depth. 

**Somewhere, a child was crying… she ** ** _had _ ** **to get up.**

* * *

  
  


Toriel Dreemurr felt like absolute death: her face was partially soaked by the puddle of tears she’d created. She’d been crying her eyes out even when unconscious it seemed, that paired with the horrendous pain stabbing into her heart meant she was still alive. Alive and curled up on her own floor, her home was empty, cold, and dark. How she had come here was slowly coming back to her, burdening her SOUL as new aches and pains came to be.

* * *

She had made a decision that would reside along with the most difficult and heart wrenching things she had ever had to do. That  _ miserable  _ miserable human, it was for his own  _ good:  _ she knew he wouldn't be able to understand and would try to fight it as she was told... 

But  _ no…  _ something was wrong: the look on his battered face, it was something she couldn’t forget: that lost and  _ wounded  _ expression. It only worsened when she was forced to a measure to keep him from harming himself any further. She had absolutely no fathomable intention to make it hurt, but when that attack struck him: how he faltered and cried in pain… it was too much for her to bear, but it was when she’d come over to take it all back that the worst part happened. 

When that bullet struck her…

* * *

Toriel placed a paw over the very spot where it hit her: nary a wound was found. It had caused her no physical damage but instead she was struck with a brief but intense sensation mimicking the worst traumas she had ever experienced in her existence, every bad feeling overwhelming her in the instant it happened. Like it had become too much to _exist _anymore and she wanted nothing more than to fall down and cease living in span of it. How was it possible for her to feel this way... _again? _ Could the extent of Brainz's cruelty explain any of this? 

Toriel found herself eyeing the things that accompanied herself on the floor.  _ Guns:  _ the horrible things she’d come to know about. Weapons born with the singular purpose of strengthening killing intent… That’s at least what the human who showed her the first one told her. Yeah: she remembered seeing them simply brandish their weapon right as she explained her grave concern about them leaving the RUINS. Their explanation included talk of ‘firepower’ and human exclusive ‘bullets’ with the purpose to kill people. She never saw the human again… But that weapon they were holding: it looked so similar to the one Brainz attacked her with: the one laying on the floor just across from her. Brainz must have left it behind when he fled. 

It had happened so fast, but there was something about the rusted thing: this screaming familiar feeling that was nothing but a deceptive mystery: she crawled over and picked it up. It felt horrible her grip. It was so cold and soulless feeling, not to mention how awkward it was to hold from the small size. It also filled her mitts with a  _ burning  _ sensation, like it was eating away at her… the same attribute that Brainz’s strange ‘blood’ possessed; only here it was carried over by the bright red fingerprints all over the weapon.

It was just like the weapon Toriel had confiscated from Brainz so far before, the bad feeling was returning. She wanted nothing more than to drop it and to never have to gaze upon a gun for the rest of her life, but she was affixed to it: she couldn’t do that until she was finished with it. Toriel inspected the dreadful thing from every side and angle until she found that button that all guns presumably had. She could barely press it, it was so small and hard to press. The spinny part of the gun dislodged and came out: revealing to her all of the bullet holding holes, the gold tubes inside each one slid out and clinked to the floor. Toriel picked up every single one of the six bullets one by one and the burning was so much worse on them, she could feel the killing intent seeping into her claws. What was this all for? 

The one thing she was told about ‘human bullets’, their one downside so to speak was that they had to be  _ built  _ like every other one of their weapons. These artificial things could only be used  _ once,  _ which explained why the United State’s version of the guard all carried  _ so  _ many of them. They truly were nothing like the bullets  _ she  _ knew about. The point was; you would be able to tell when a bullet was used, when the shiny head on top of the golden tube was gone, when the bullet became as hollow as the conscience of the person who used it. The physical indication for the deed committed. 

Toriel found that all six bullets still had their heads… the horrible feeling shot up inside of her. She was still alive and the bullets were all intact because Brainz didn’t shoot her. The ghastly surge that caused her to collapse made so much  _ sense  _ now. That surge of despair; the hysterical rage, sick cynicism, rash indignancy, the harrowing depression paired with soul crushing loneliness, and the heartbreak… they weren’t  _ her  _ emotions… they were Brainz’s. He projected them onto her, and it was too much to bear, there was no way he could’ve pretended what she had felt from him: it was genuine. 

She wouldn’t be alive if he truly wanted to kill her. The utter lack of damage he caused her, it just made everything so much worse. After everything she had done to him, he was nothing like the demon described to her and she just cast him away. The only of her ‘children’ to ever return, perhaps the one that needed her the most: and she attacked him.  ** _It was no wonder why he reacted like that, like a frightened kid pushed into the corner. _ **

The gun fell to the floor, her claw pressed onto her mouth. She nearly fell over, Toriel felt so  _ sick _ . 

“Oh my god. What have I  _ done _ ?”

The tears ran down her face once more, the quivers followed her sobs. She couldn’t speak a further word, fated to weep uncontrollably. Her scars from all of her losses were torn open, the pain never felt so fresh and raw. It was the culmination of every failure from her claws; she couldn’t save anyone, not a single child was spared from her neglect. Brainz was right all along to be afraid of her, his only mistake was coming  _ back,  _ ** _trusting her. _ **

The irony was presented so clearly in front of her, even through her flooded eyes. Of everything she had done to protect him from the world, she failed to protect him from herself. Why stop there, it was all going to be her fault anyway, when the deaths came in-

‘ ** _No…_ ** ’

Toriel uncurled from herself and worked to dry her face, stifling the sobs with a strong sniff. She made herself stand up and calm herself by breathing forcefully. It did not have to end in fiery despair, she did not have to sit here from her own cowardice and let it happen. She had pushed Brainz to fall down the path of self destruction, but she could still grab him and stop this before it concluded.

“There’s still time…There’s still time…There’s  _ still _ time…”

She repeated this mantra to force the doubt away, it only caused all of this and she wasn’t going to ever let it sway her again. She passed the cold bodies laying by the basement stairs and only hoped she wasn’t too late with that promise. 

Everytime Toriel had descended this staircase, she had followed or chased after someone before their eventual death. She promised herself after the  _ last  _ one that she would take the stairs first and prevent the next human from leaving, from walking to their death. But something about Brainz made her become deaf to her past words, that same something was making her ignore every one of her inner voices begging her not to leave. 

Her lonesome walk came to its natural end, where she had said goodbye too many times. Only this time, there was no door to hide behind and pray for safety. There was nothing but a glimpse of violence waiting for her to approach it. She had heard the commotion coming from the basement before: Eeneyae had told her to take cover as he and his friends went to confront it, spurred by their suspicion about ‘Suspect Omega’ returning just for Toriel’s sake… 

She tried to aid the fallen humans, but they were completely gone: not even their SOULs persisted… how could this be? How long was she unconscious? Unless, someone  _ took _ them. 

Toriel had no intention to further her thoughts on this. Rather, what she was about to do. She hadn’t left this place since she arrived in over twenty years, two decades of hiding from everything except her own despair. Now that the door was gone, the path was completely open to all and she could fester here no more. She had nothing but darkness lying beyond, but her own amassed guilt was worse than anything  _ anyone  _ could throw at her. 

[We've only just begun...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2Xn7tI)

  
  
  
  



	2. What have I done?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11:55:15  
11:55:14  
11:55:13  
...

The last time Toriel walked this path, her tears had nearly blinded her. Her world had fallen apart and she refused to face it anymore, she crept through the large doors just looking for a place to curl up and hide from the world. 

Now, the pitch blackness and dense fog were hiding the entire world from _ her. _She didn’t need to see to sense that something was already amiss: the air was dense and suffocating, it smelled of must and hinted at something worse. The ground squelched under her feet, its cold and squishy consistency stuck to her and made her shudder uncomfortably. 

Toriel created a fireball and held onto it, holding her arm out in front of her like a torch to light her way. The legions of dead trees on either side of her acted as a breeding ground for her nervous thoughts as shapes danced in the warm glow of her light. She didn’t need to give her recollection much credit to know that this place had _ changed _since she was gone. ‘Snowdin’ couldn’t describe the land anymore, there wasn’t a single flake of snow to be seen, she was ankle deep in the loosest of mud. It was all mud, mud… and something that almost looked like snow on the ground. How it glimmered in her light… 

Monster dust.   
  


Toriel gasped and almost lost her light from the sudden inattention to it. She thought she was accustomed to death from all the children she lost, but she hadn't seen it with her own eyes for a long time. It was up there with the most horrible things she’d witnessed immediately. She felt dull pain grasping her heart, the bad feelings were coming back and she could not make them stop.

‘What happened here?’ 

She thought insufferably as she found herself drawn closer to the horrible show. 

‘Did he do this?’ 

Part of her wanted to slap herself for thinking that, but it just slipped out. Her mind was a mess of over twenty conflicting voices, all of them were hers and were scared. Somebody was _ dead, _they were gone forever and that’s what was going to become of Brainz.

But what _about_ Brainz? What he did with Toriel was one thing, but the soldiers in her home: he killed them. He already looked like he had been acquainted with violence, but to do it so impulsively? He could have seen the monster and deduced they were an obstacle just like that… For some reason though, Toriel could _not _see that happening. What Brainz did in her home though, what he said…. she didn’t forget what he told her: about the soldiers being here on a genocidal crusade. His gruff voice was still ringing in her ears; _he was so desperate and frightened, why didn’t she realize? Why did he actually care about her? Why did she treat him so coldly? Whatever this was, it was HER fault: she had over a dozen deaths to atone to and the number was going to keep growing and-_

Toriel wiped the moisture from her face and tried to focus. 

  
  


<strike> -No, </strike> <strike>because that would mean Asgore was right</strike>. Brainz was drowning in his own paranoia, he wasn’t thinking straight: what he had done was a terrible thing… but she knew he couldn’t have meant it. He thought he was _ protecting _her from his ‘enemies’. He was just very ill, and her decision to let him off when they first met was a grave error. Toriel was almost certain she wasn’t going to be forgiven for her mistakes but she still had to make this right. She did not have to forgive him for any 'transgression' against her, it was her that did wrong: not him. 

What Brainz said about the soldiers though, it couldn’t have been right, Toriel personally _ spoke _to them. Mr Mordegrid and Dick-

Captain Pailurn had asked for her to omit his surname and rank when referring to him, just as the (ex) Queen of the underground requested her own previous title to be overlooked too once she told them.

-were beyond sensible and kind to her, they wanted nothing but to understand what was going on. What they said about _ Brainz _though, how he was merciless and a menace to both worlds: they must’ve been in error too… it just didn’t line up. She had been left to speculate the details for just about everything that had occurred so far, she needed facts and nothing less now. Letting terror overcome her would not help anyone.

So she looked at this tragedy and thought, 

‘It is just a misunderstanding. That is what this entire situation amounts to: a big misunderstanding. The sooner I can find a soldier or the two leaders, the sooner we can all resolve this. Everything will be just fine.’

The horrible feeling she had to push down into herself was one thing, but the utter lack of light was another. She was going to have a hard time finding _anybody _in this, even with her magic. Why had all the lights gone out? Where was everyone? She had to leave the dust behind for now, but it wouldn’t leave her thoughts. _Especially _when she discovered another pile, then _another _pile, and **_another _**pile. Every additional clump of dust was a hard blow to her confidence in her theory. After the sixth sign of a vanquished monster, it was _obvious _that somebody was doing it on purpose, this wasn’t fear or retaliation. Somebody was doing this on _purpose… _but who? Everyone she knew seemed so unlikely, but at the same time it felt like it couldn’t have been more obvious. She was stuck doubting and second guessing herself, nothing constructive could come of her thoughts right now: too crowded. It was best she keep walking until she found help. 

As she was doing just that, she paused her pace when the ground began to tremble beneath her. The vibrations were long and so powerful that she nearly lost her balance. Another gasp preceded her thoughts.

‘An earthquake? But we have not sustained one since…’

She looked all around to the ambient lights that weren’t shining, she hadn’t witnessed them going dark _ also _since-

‘-Oh no.’ 

But she also shook her head decisively at the unsaid notion.

‘No, there is no need to assume that, there is no reason to think there is something wrong with the CORE.’ 

  
  


Well there _ were _a couple of reasons but they just stood more things to ignore. The dead silence gave all the scared little voices the perfect backdrop for her. She still maintained herself not to indulge in them and resumed her walking when the ground finally settled. 

So, as she had been walking: Toriel passed by several small booths lining her way. In regards to all of them, a solemn word left her lips.

“Checkpoints.”

Her incredibly hesitant venture out into the ‘wild’ just kept getting worse.

She remembered _ that _ idea when it was just angry words picked out from ‘you know who’s’ declarative tirade against humanity. It really didn’t raise her hopes seeing them come to fruition. It also didn’t do any good that not a single one was occupied as she proceeded. The last booth though, had something more ‘noteworthy’ laying in front of it. Sure it was just ‘another pile of dust’ as if that was _ new _ to her at this point, but _ this _one had something to accompany it: one big and ruined shield wearing the same winged circle that she did. 

Of all the things she had spoken to the soldiers about, Toriel had dictated that of the monsters that could pose as threats to them: the ones bearing the rune would be the most trouble. She told them of the underground’s parallel to _ them _(The military), how they were on strict orders straight from the king to hunt down any humans who crossed them. She told them more specific details than she ever did with Brainz. It wouldn’t matter though to relay that distinction to him, as she felt just about everything about him would lead to combat with any monster that met him. The soldiers though; no regular monster would want to engage with such a large and well equipped party: no monster except the ones that composed the royal guard. 

She told them this with the grim visions of impending death sitting in her head, but this warning carried her hope that all the other monsters would be spared. That they wouldn’t dare to accost the soldiers and that any who did, could be dissuaded without dusting. It certainly felt like she was dooming everybody on the royal guard <strike> but was that such a bad thing?, </strike>but they were destined to doom themselves, blinded from their wits by Asgore’s orders. 

_ ‘They used to be the monsters that protected us. But he turned them into killers.’ _

  
  


Here’s where it became ‘funny’: after Toriel had explained all of this, the soldier captain looked at her and nodded sympathetically. 

* * *

  
  
  


“Miss Toriel-”

He spoke with his drawl and friendly, informal demeanor.

“- I think I can see where yer comin from here. Where you’re at?”

Pailurn had shaken his head understandingly, his bushy eyebrows went as high as they’d go.

“And you know, I gotta commend you for comin _ clean _ like that, these’re still yer _ people _ in a way, and it’s just- _ Mmmhh…. Mmhn-mhmmmm…” _

He didn’t finish, but his tone said everything he wanted to say about that. Toriel remembered though, the way the man suddenly turned to her and looked her dead in the eyes. 

“Look, I know how kind of _ scary _ this all looks right now to you- but I wanna tell yeh _ Me, _ the commander here; we didn’t come here to just _ blast _ everyone and everything away! That’s not what we’re here for. The last thing we want is for _ *anyone* _ to get hurt. _ Yes, _ even our mutual ‘friend’. We dun want _ any _violence, it’s the last thing on our minds.”

Maybe her face lit up a bit, maybe Pailurn gave her something of assurance. His smile did go away though, the more sordid part of his words had to follow. 

“But do try’ta understand here now. All of these girls and boys here-”

His hand gestured to the growing congregation of soldiers filling the home and front yard. 

“-these’re like _ my _ children in a way. I gotta look after em above _ anything _ else. If anything _ really _bad happens- I can’t promise this’ll go without a hitch and everyone comes out OK. With how yer portraying these erh ‘Monsters’, they’ve got some serious tunnel vision here, it may not be easy to convince em to lay down their weapons but-.”

He put his rough and calloused hand onto her shoulder and nodded gently.

“- We’re gonna give it a shot, Alright? That, I can promise you.” 

His words were more genuine and far less hesitant than the promise Brainz barely gave her. But somehow, they instilled the same dread and unsureness that his did. Even the captain’s touch to her caused a shiver. She could feel something deep down inside of both the humans she felt, something wicked and terrible. It didn’t feel right, something _ was _ wrong. 

* * *

Here she was, staring grimly at the remains of a once proud monster. As if she ever deserved a promise of all things… As if anything could ever come true down here anymore except her worst nightmares. It was really too early to give into them, she had to stay on track.

Toriel remembered this narrow passage of trees coming up, how she could barely squeeze herself through the tight space. She never liked passing through, yet she didn’t remember the trees looking so menacing and almost radiating with hostility. How the darkness within the confined space cast a curtain she couldn’t see through, no matter how bright she tried to illuminate it. It looked like someone else tried to light it up too, a trail of glowsticks started at the entrance to the passage. Most of them were dead, and the ones that still glowed were barely doing so at that. It looked like nobody had come through this way for a while now… concerning. Seriously, the piles of dust and solitude were starting to feel like desolation, where was _ anybody? _

It was going to be _ fine… _ Just beyond the trees here was the village of Snowdin and she was bound to run into soldiers which was a relief. She was also going to be greeted by all the monsters who lived there, which was… not much of a relief. If anybody recognized her, what was she going to say to them? When her plan was to hide in that lonely little house of hers for the 'rest of her life', it was easy not to think about these things, but now? If she had to look some confused and potentially hurting face in the eyes, she felt she wouldn’t be able to find the words to speak, yet as terrible as it sounded though, she had more prominent concerns right now. 

The tramp through the claustrophobic space was bad enough with the branches that pricked and scratched at her, but the worst to come was waiting on the other side. Toriel narrowly avoided stepping in something that awaited her just outside the passage. It was red, but not red enough belong to Brainz, so _ that _ moment of abject terror had passed, but she was still looking at a puddle of blood. God, there was so _ much _of it that she could have just as well been looking at the sign of a dead human, but nary a body or a presence was found. The streaks present in the mud, they were drag marks… and they went off the path and lead her all the way to the edge. A cliff overlooking the very dark void below. 

Toriel exclaimed and backed away so impulsively that she _ did _ step in the red puddle. She shuddered the loudest so far and retreated back to the trees. She had taken one look at the legion of gangling trees below and felt her heart try to burst out from her. She didn’t find the source of the blood, the drop was far too tall and dark to see anything but the tops of the woods: and that was the problem for her. Toriel was not very good with heights, she downright hated them as well as the fact that the underground was full of them, and that she was going to have to endure one of the worst ones to get into Snowdin. That rickety old bridge looked just as horrible and perilous as it did all those years ago and just like the last time she was faced with crossing it: she felt her subconscious begging her to turn back. Her mind had been already made up _then _and it was already made up _now, _ and with the deepest breath out of the lot of them: Toriel gripped the rope handrail for her dear life and took the first step onto the bridge. 

Oh, how it _ sagged _ and ** _-Creaked!- _ **under her, every worrying noise easily accompanied her subtle whimpers with every step. She shouldn’t have been able to hear everything so clearly, the buzz of an occupied town should have been muffling the noise by now: the dreaded lack of it was only making everything worse. Toriel resorted to thinking out loud to distract herself as she inched along.

‘It is all fine! It is all going to just _ fine, _ this bridge is still standing after all the years and it is not going to break just _ now, _ making me ** _fall _ ** _ all _ that way _ down! _ Now why would it do _ that?’ _

Her ‘reassurances’ started to degrade-

‘I can not even see the light of the town! How long is this bridge?? Did they make it longer? Why would they do that?? Why can I not see the end?! Did he make this the entire _ Underground _now?! Why would he do this?!!' 

-and Toriel began to hurry along the rope, whimpering the entire time as her legs trembled. She looked down more times than she’d ever wanted to and her pace became a full on panicked sprint when she thought about the possibility of another earthquake causing the bridge to fail and her to plummet to her death. Her heart was pounding pretty hard by the time she touched solid ground again, but she did make it.

Toriel let out a deep sigh of relief to put her proper composure back and one deep breath to prepare herself for the hopefully not so many conversations she’d have next. Then she gasped at what she saw. What she _ couldn’t _ see. Not a single light or sign of life in the town: no soldiers, no monsters, _ nothing _ but pitch blackness. Toriel was nearly incapable of putting thought to this, this _ was _ Snowdin, right? Yes, here was the big and decorative sign that welcomed everyone! Like the town, it was also dark and dead. 

[Welcome to Snowdin!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeJkDTKMLDg)

Toriel called out for anyone’s attention, her own voice was the only thing to answer as it echoed back to her. 

**Nobody Answered…**

**Nobody came… **

She began to make her way into the village, her personal illumination couldn’t help but brighten up all the spaces behind those vacant door frames and empty windows. She couldn’t deny what she saw: Doors that lay in pieces off of their hinges, fragments of windows she had to take great care not to step in, countless holes that bore into _ every _ building, and the ** _dust, _ ** there was so much dust. Inside of every building, every crack or ajar space she looked into: dust, dust, and more _ dust. _Still she retained her willful lack of deduction, all until one specific glimmer caught her eye.

On another house occupied solely by dust and holes, a large and threatening looking knife was stuck to the vacant doorway. Toriel felt she’d seen the thing before, those jagged teeth and that big handle; but something else took her gaze. Separating the blade from the wood was a ragged little scarf made of green stripes.

“Oh no…” 

It couldn’t be, she couldn’t be seeing this with her own eyes. Toriel was taken aback from the sight, she felt her body turning into stone as she was unable to move. The way the knife was so _ purposefully _ thrust through the fabric, and those _ stripes… _

‘He would not do this, _ why _ would he do this? Why would _ they _ do this? _ No, _ this can _ not _ be happening…. Not ** _again… _ ** no no _ NO, _ they _ CANNOT DO THIS-” _

Suddenly, the flames slipped from her control and went out with a small explosion that caused her to stumble.. She had failed to notice her rising emotion intermingling with her magic until it grew beyond her control and left her in the dark. But even though… she could still see the silhouette of the thing pinned the wood, the image itself was stuck to her SOUL.

This. Was done. On _ purpose. _ Without a smidgen of _ mercy, _ there was absolutely no denying it. The doubt from before was now an unskippable question she had to ask herself before she could even think about focusing to light her path: _ Who did this? _

It ** _couldn’t _ ** have been _ him! _ But at the same time… he was so full of _ despair _ and ** _unstable! _ ** What if her actions against him were the very thing that pushed him over? His only hope in the world breaking in front of him like it did… he was full of contempt and rage… it… but _ NO. _ Nobody had to have murdered a _ child _ of all things, not so _ derisively! _ This did not have to mean _ anything, _things must have changed since she left: these stripes, they meant NOTHING. This was all-

Toriel dropped to her knees and clutched her head with her trembling claws. The instincts and implications _ REFUSED _to be stifled any longer and burst from her as a long and plaintive wail that screamed throughout the ransacked town. 

“Oh _god, _what have I **_done_****_?!” _**

Her eyes streamed with uninterrupted tears, her teeth chattered and her claws shook. She couldn’t control herself, the despair had already set in. There was no such thing as doubting the obvious like this. She had let killers pass through her home and they have preyed upon imprisoned denizens beneath the surface. Her efforts to protect hapless humans from the murderous monsters blinded her judgment to murderous humans come to kill all the hapless monsters… 

How quaint.

How pathetic. 

Just ‘another failure’ for her record. 

Failing at every task, in every way. 

That’s what she was.

Toriel, A failure. 

**She couldn’t even save, ** ** _one _ ** **SOUL. **

But maybe… it did not have to be hopeless. Perhaps with what little power she had in the scheme of things. Maybe she _ could _ save just _ one _soul. It wasn’t too late, she still had time to make it right, but she wasn’t going to have so much time if she spent all of it huddled over like this. 

**He doesn’t have to ** ** _die… _ **

Brainz had managed to survive the underground, _ twice: _ of all the children she once harbored, he was the hardiest. His utter lack of trust in people (duly reinforced by her) did give him an astonishing capacity for survival. The chances were that he was on his way back to the capitol to take Asgore’s life and leave the underground to its demise… that or he was already gone. Well, this was the new thing for her _ not _to dwell on now. 

Toriel struggled to reignite her flame, but she got it back into her trembling claws. Back to illuminating the way and consuming every last bit of her willpower to keep her flame up. She had her drive to keep going, and all the incentive in the world. 

She left the garment alone and restarted her trek through the cold mud, full fledged anxiety and building paranoia were her sole companions now. It really wasn’t long until she found more blood to step in, she was far from doing so though: being it was glowing. So this was a mixed thing for her: good because it meant she was going the right way, bad because it meant Brainz was hurt and was shedding. At least it was no more than sparse droplets on the ground, unlike the _ pools _of non luminescent blood that accompanied it. 

It looked like a skirmish had occurred here and without really any dust being present, it meant Brainz must’ve engaged with the soldiers. There were a lot of bullet casings on the ground too, so a battle must’ve occurred… here in front of this unfamiliar building.

** _GRILLBY’S _ **

  
‘Must be new’ 

She thought to herself. Toriel had no reason to believe there was any life behind the shattered windows and trampled door, there certainly weren’t any signs of it in _ front _of the building. Yeah, so there was blood everywhere but no one to source it to. No fallen humans (Thank goodness) or the presence of their SOULs (Also good). Not so much good was the fact she had no idea what to make of this and probably wouldn’t by the time this was all over. That was going to become a common theme. 

Back to his trail, it seemed to abandon the main path and favored a left turn just off the side of the building. It ceased after a couple of steps; another mixed thing, it was good he must have mended his injuries, but not so good that Toriel was back to following intuition. 

‘Wait a moment.’ 

Toriel began to think: while some of the setting was unfamiliar to her, the general layout of this town was still embedded in her memory. This three way junction was significant…. _ S i g n i f i c a n t b e c a u s e. . . _Right, the river! You either kept going straight and entered Waterfall, or you turned and went to the river that encompassed the entire underground! 

Toriel felt a small sense of relief upon the successful recollection, but then the implications made her twitch. If Brainz went this way and took the river, that meant that she _ really _ didn’t have time to spare. Was it time to consider ‘ _ the possibility’? _ ** _No_ ** actually. 

When Toriel hurried up to the edge of the channel, she found that her memory depicting water here was wrong… the river was bone dry. Not only that, but there were also piles of debris as tall as a house completely plugging it up. This was nothing but a dark and blocked up trench and an appropriately timed earthquake gave her a good clue as to how the river ended up like this. There was no way Brainz could have used this, or anyone for that matter. He must have turned back and proceeded to Waterfall. Again, momentary relief and then dread because that meant that Brainz was going to have to traverse this place a _ third _time… well so was Toriel.

‘Ohhh no…’ 

This was more of a silent and disheartened kind of ‘exclamation’. It really wasn’t relevant to the situation, but seeing one of her favorite buildings in the entire underground laying in ruins really made her upset. 

‘The (Library)’ 

Toriel loved this place, it was one of the things she missed the most about her ‘voluntary exile’, not just the books she hadn’t read three hundred times over yet, but all the people that would come in and share their experiences with her. The children too, they loved it when she would read stories to them. The children… she had to save _ this _one still. Back to it. 

A couple more desecrated looking houses and Toriel found herself at the end of Snowdin, or what was left of it at least. She ran her claws through her whole head, pulling her ears on the way down and took a deep breath. This was already the second hardest thing she’d done (or was about to do), fast competing to be the ‘first’ thing. She had no plans or expectations for what she was going to find on this journey. All she had was her dated memory, a pretty discredited judgement, and her burning need to save her wayward child. 

All that was left was the upcoming tribulation she was sure she would get to experience. What would it be? Another pile of dust preceded by her first encounter with a murderous human being? How about another example of wanton destruction and cruelty she once thought impossible to be realized? 

** _Or… _ **how about a boiling hot stream of water parallel to the same path she walked on? Probably the cause of all the snow melting with the absurd amount of steam it was giving off?

‘Hmn… Oh god.’ 


	3. This is not bad... It is worse.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11:27:51  
11:27:50  
11:27:49  
...

One more time from the top, while shed paced back and forth to assist her thoughts.

‘This is the main cooling feed that directly enters the CORE and keeps it cold, we ensured  _ it  _ was cold by dropping big blocks of ice into it and then putting something else in the water so it itself would not freeze.’ 

She knew she was forgetting a whole bunch of names, terms, and more specific details listed in the binderbound operator’s manual she read, but what really mattered was that this water was supposed to be very cold and full of ice cubes and it obviously was  _ not.  _ Toriel leaned over the dangerous stream and saw the unmanned ice dispenser laying dormant in the town. 

‘Why had we never made this go by itself too?’ 

It provided a <strike>distraction </strike>purpose for a monster to help their existence, but this was a serious position and a serious problem if it ever went vacant.

What did this mean though? It meant the same thing she thought of when she experienced the first earthquake:  _ them _ tied to this blackout and the boiling feed system meant that the CORE was overheating and malfunctioning like such. 

Despite her earlier efforts to keep calm and prevent alarmism in herself, what she considered here was in no way speculation: the boiling feed stream was a telltale sign of the CORE under duress. This was a bad thing by the way… a  _ really  _ bad thing. If that wasn’t bad enough, it came with another ‘rhetorical’ question. 

‘So the ice blocks are no more. But even with _ out _ them- this is not enough to cause this kind of disruption! I-i, remember there are  _ many- _ *things* built into the CORE to prevent this!’

The architect said a lot of big and hard to remember words about how the CORE worked to Toriel, but she specifically remembered someone telling her this  _ joke _ about it: ‘God themself couldn’t break this thing!’ Well somebody or something obviously  _ did  _ and what was worse was the evidence of the lack of technicians trying to  _ fix  _ it. 

‘Or maybe-’

She thought, her expression slowly dropped down.

‘- There  _ are  _ no more technicians left to repair it.’

Was there even an architect? There _had _to be, but...

That wasn’t something she wanted to think about, mainly because it pointed the claw at  _ her.  _ Nevermind the massacre occurring right now, but how many monsters fell down at her expense? How many couldn’t take the added despair of their queen  _ leaving  _ them like she did when they needed her guidance the most? Twenty years worth of festering did not even compare to the feeling she felt in her gut right now. Toriel’s light almost went out again, she felt really lightheaded and dizzy for a moment. 

**FOCUS. **

So the CORE was malfunctioning because someone or something damaged it severely, the entire underground was going to go dark, and whatever people trapped down here still alive would be trapped in pitch blackness too… probably living their last moments in sheer terror and confusion. As horrible as it was to think about, Toriel had something much worse on her mind. 

Providing power and keeping the lights on was only *One* of the things tasked to the CORE… when compared to the *Other* thing it did: power was more of an ancillary responsibility. Mt Ebott is not a mountain and everyone who was trapped beneath the barrier knew that very well: its a  ** _volcano, _ ** an inactive one at that. Inactive, until it decided it wanted to change its mind sometime after the monsters were put here, the CORE prevented it from doing so: the pressure and heat intended to build up to an eruption was mitigated and diverted to create power! 

The earthquake that nearly spat some of the heated water onto Toriel only confirmed to her that everyone down here had a much,  _ much  _ bigger problem growing beneath their feet. 

“Oh  _ god,  _ merciful god… Everyone. Is going to  _ die!” _

The soldiers were not here to break the barrier and free everyone, that barrier was staying put and so was everyone trapped beneath here. There was going to be no escaping, the world as all monsters knew it, was going to end. Funny how all this developed within the span of a couple of days. Toriel knew very well by now that life had a terrible habit of going bad when you weren’t looking, she just didn’t believe it could happen twice, or was it three times by now? 

“Ohhh dear, ohhh dear… oh dear-  _ Ohhhhhh…” _

Eventually the sounds coming out of her weren’t too unlike terrified bleating and hyperventilating. When she started to sound hysterical, Toriel suddenly cut herself off and tugged on her own ears while taking a deep breath, she did not feel any better as it came out but it’d have to do. 

“Keep it  _ together _ , Tori-”

She also realized she was speaking out loud to herself and shook her head. Her inner voice tried to sound assuring.

‘-you are going to need all your wits. You will not help anyone,  _ panicking.  _ Like this. You are just going to need to intervene and- ‘touch up’ the CORE, that you have not seen for over twenty  _ years!  _ You are going to need to take care of this  _ and  _ save Brainz from the many hostile soldiers that are running rampant throughout the entire underground!”

Another big shiver ran throughout her, she made a rather high pitched sound from it. Yet she straightened her posture and put that composed smile on her face, just like she rehearsed.

‘No problem! I- used to be a mom. I think- I think I have endured worse things.’

Off she went, with the transport river being ‘out of order’, Toriel had the pleasure of taking the scenic route toward the CORE. She used to enjoy going on these walks back and forth from her home to her old home, having a friendly ‘hello’ with everyone she passed. Sometimes she’d have permanent company on her little walks, it was the greatest little pleasure she enjoyed… well, she was alone for this one and hoped that wasn’t going to change.

The utter darkness wasn’t letting up, she expected it wasn’t going to just about anywhere and that meant she would have to keep her light for just about her entire trip. Toriel walked until she couldn’t hear the sound of steam hissing from the feed channel anymore, it was good she was getting away from the area: the humidity was starting to make her fur damp. Of course, she knew damp was going to become soaked as she remembered the nature of the place she was entering. She was never a fan of Waterfall’s  _ many  _ opportunities to drench her in freezing cold water, it wasn't like it was _too _hard to dry her fur but she still did not like it. Even now, her feet up to her ankles were caked with slimy mud and spots of blood. (This was setting off so many alarms in her head)

She hadn’t been free of the steam for long when something relatively inert made her stop. While Toriel  _ really  _ didn’t have the time to stop for things, she was on edge and paranoid enough to want to spot everything in her path. She spotted; well it kind of looked like an echo flower next to another sentry booth. The blue glow was absent and the thing was wilted down to the ground, it was dead. It said nothing as Toriel passed by it, not a single solitary word. Fear found a tighter grip on her as she left the dead flower.

It was so dark… she was so  _ alone:  _ every sound the world made, caused her to twitch and look behind and all around her. There the sound of wind howling within  _ some  _ confined space, the bass of rumbling earth and grinding rock, but the closest and easiest to distinguish out of all was rushing water. As she discovered and recalled, Waterfall had its namesakes. The one that Toriel found first though, required her to stop again. 

While she had been gone for a  _ long  _ time and knew everything could’ve changed in her absence: she knew that  ** _this _ ** was not normal… The waterfall that separated her path was flowing “ _ angrily”  _ the current was whitewater at this point. No wonder why she could hear it from so far away. What was worse was that the bridge that was supposed to be connecting land with the water flowing under it: was  _ gone!  _ Toriel almost had no doubts that the violent current had swept it away. The discovery wasn’t over yet though because in addition to the roar of the angry waterfall was the sound of  _ pouring  _ down below as if the water was actually  _ going  _ somewhere.  _ That  _ wasn’t supposed to happen  _ so much,  _ that she actually dared to peer over the side of the path to the endless abyss below. Even though it gave her a good shake, Toriel discovered that the bottomless abyss hugging the path wasn’t so bottomless at all! In fact, even though it was dreadfully dark, she could see the water rippling not ten meters below her. That  _ really  _ wasn’t supposed to be happening: she added that to the list of similar occurrences. As bewildered and terrified as she was, Toriel could stand not to figure out if it would eventually fill up and submerge this entire passage: she had no choice but to brace herself and ford the waterfall. 

‘Oh my burning  _ stars  _ this is  ** _COLD!_ ** ’ 

The water was really cold. It felt like a million blades stabbing her fur, she had never felt such a frigid sensation in her life that the initial shock caused a panicked bleat to come out of her as the fall drenched her. Toriel fought the push of the water fiercely and did not succumb to it nor did her persistent flame. She leapt out of the waterfall and onto the other side, a soaked and shivering boss monster. This was why she didn’t like swimming so much, her fur turned turncoat in function and only retained the liquid ice against her body. Her robe stuck to her too, clung like an icy cold blanket.

‘ _ Cold… cold cold cold. Oh god this is cold’ _

Fortunately for her, with a little concentration: Fire magic could do just about anything. One such application was for the warmth in her grip to spread throughout her. The cold dampness soon vaporized completely into steam.

‘Ahh, much better.’

She’d learned that trick ‘forever’ ago. With less intensity, it made for really warm hugs that she was always happy to offer to… Well she was drier and warmer now. Drying her clothes was a different story, but for now she was back to it and hoping she would not have to get wet again. 

Well that was the shortest lived hope of hers, Toriel found another gap she didn’t remember in the path, albeit with a significantly ‘less angry’ waterfall dividing it. There was a placard on the wall too just before it, but Toriel had some trouble making it out. The characters were all faded and smudged with something that smelled pretty foul. 

_ Something something, in the water will sprout.  _

Well there was nothing  _ in  _ the water save for a bunch of faded and vaguely yellow flower petals. It put an idle and unpleasant thought in her head as she had to wade through the cold stream. 

‘I do wonder what became of  _ that  _ thing… I doubt it will bother another SOUL after greeting these humans.’

She made it across and worked on drying herself off again, but she aborted that notion upon feeling the icy daggers around her ankles. The area was partially flooded and there was no way she was drying off until she left, Toriel was better off on focusing her magic to keep herself warm. 

It looked like there was a little more to 'danger' than the murky standing water: while the last tremor was ten minutes ago, the natural ceiling of this next room had partially given in and formed a massive slope of rubble. Toriel could see numerous narrow streams of water squirting out from the tiny gaps in the rocks, it looked like a lot more water wanted to get through and that a couple more tremors would make that happen. Her vision wouldn’t leave the leaking pile even as she walked forward… it lead to her tripping and falling into a deeper portion of the pool with a quick yelp. Back to being completely soaked, Toriel grunted botheredly as she felt around for the higher ground again. 

Hold on now, before she climbed out of the small trench, something actually visible outside of her own light caught her eye, some kind of blue light peeking out from a little siding. She  _ was  _ in a hurry, but come  _ on.  _ An actual sign of potential life for once? What if it was  _ him  _ just hiding out? Or  _ anybody  _ <strike>not a soldier</strike>. She  _ had  _ to investigate it, god forbid she would overlook something. 

Toriel was half on the point, it wasn’t a monster nor a human: an echo flower, but it  _ was  _ alive (It was starting to wilt and fade though) She climbed out in front of a bench she may have remembered and grimaced at… well  _ whatever  _ was floating around in the water. There was nothing else here though and Toriel was better off on her way, but not without hearing what the flower would have to say. She certainly didn’t expect to hear  _ his  _ voice coming out of it.

** _“Brainz wasn’t here…” _ **

The voice was muffled and marred by distortion, but there was no questioning who it directly belonged to, Toriel could even make out a sort of humorous tone to it: like he had stifled the urge to crack up after saying that message. What would he have to be laughing about? Toriel couldn’t even begin to think of anything, but hearing his voice made her feel a tremendous amount of relief. That fact that he  _ had  _ been here and had to have been still alive was enough to curb the anxiety for now. 

“... _ Thank you.” _

She clasped her chest and did whisper that little gratitude, but she was close enough to the flower that it would thank the next person who interacted with it… if they and  _ it  _ were still alive by that time. 

There was a baking pan floating around in here too, she just noticed and while she was at noticing things: she noticed that the water started to ripple without provocation everywhere. This went on for ten seconds until she began to feel the shaking too. Half of her thoughts were on the pile of rubble coming from the ceiling and the other half were on getting away from the pile before it risked collapsing further. She was already having a difficult time traversing the room, not seeing where it dipped down and whatnot under all the water, but in the peak of the tremoring, with the water crashing into the walls like waves; a loud  ** _*KRA-AKK!* _ ** was heard from within the pile. 

She didn’t  _ want  _ to look behind, she didn’t  _ have  _ to look behind, but she got a good look of the entire mess of earth shifting down and opening the opportunity for a massive upside down geyser of water to burst from the ceiling, making its own type of thunderous and terrifying noise. 

Toriel ran for her life. 

  
  


There was no time to respect the wishing room or the group of mostly dead echo flowers that lived in it. Toriel lifted her robe up to free her legs to book it out of there, the sound of the torrent rushing behind her gave her every reason to run even faster. For some reason vivid thoughts flooded her mind as did the path behind. She remembered exactly the last time she had to run this fast, only this time: she was running for her  _ own  _ life…  _ and _ it also was going to be in vain because the surge behind her was sounding awfully close to “about to overcome her”.

Toriel bounded out onto the dock laden with monster history. She ran and ran until the soaked wood underneath her feet had ended with a violent sea of black water. With the impending flood nearly caught up to her, Toriel didn’t even contemplate what she’d do next: she didn’t even slow down… She leapt from the dock and vanished below the surface of the water with a big splash: before  _ it  _ vanished from the powerful cascade behind with a much bigger kind of "_**Splash". **_


	4. We will do this together, children.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11:12:25  
11:12:24  
11:12:23  
...

Toriel had no control of her movements, the water held that now. She had been forced into this pitch black world, helpless to the power of the surge. She felt herself being pushed and lurched, tumbled and thrashed around like garments inside a washing machine. She wasn’t permitted to earn her bearings back for perceptibly  _ minutes.  _ Way too long for her liking and certainly for her comfort, but it wasn’t anymore risk than how dreadfully cold it was to her. 

When the current finally evened out and its grip weakened enough for her to escape it, she made for the surface. Toriel was almost unsure which direction the surface  _ was,  _ she was so discombobulated. Despite the dire lack of stimulation below, Toriel was able to find her way back up and emerge. 

It wasn’t much better up here though with the sound of rushing water booming from the natural acoustics, the water was so violent that Toriel’s head wasn’t even above it half the time: waves hit her in the face like a bag of rocks. She couldn’t see anything, let alone concentrate enough to produce a light of her own, Toriel just had the sound of the new rapids to put behind her and swim in the other direction. 

She liked nothing about this, she didn’t like swimming even when it  _ was  _ for pleasure and hers and others’ lives  _ didn’t  _ depend on it. Toriel was not having a very good time right now and she really wished all of this would be over. 

A particularly tall wave slapped her in her face. 

‘Actually, what I would prefer: would be to close my eyes and  _ wake up _ .’

To be honest, she always wished that… not a lonely night went by where she didn’t wish this. She’d wake up and this would all be just a bad dreem. As the ‘days since’ just melded into days though, her wishes ceased and reality finally set in. But right now though? Waking up in her lonely bed, in her lonely home, and in her lonely life would’ve been all she wanted right now. Kept from ruining any more lives but wiser for the wear. No more hopes, no more dreams: this is all they ever amounted to. 

Toriel swam in the dark and cold for a long time, she felt like she wasn’t getting anywhere, but the sounds of chaos behind her  _ were  _ becoming more distant, so that was something. Suddenly though, her leg bumped into something real hard underwater. It hurt… and the same something snagged her robe too, so that wasn’t fun getting it out. She felt around some more with her feet and from doing so, she may have been walking along the really long boardwalk now… or at least  _ above it _ as it was currently under five or six feet of water. That certainly wasn’t ‘good’ but at least now she would be able to continue by walking with more than half of her body in the freezing lake. It was still difficult and not very quick, but it beat having to swim, especially in her clothes. She was able to manifest a light again, with a lot less effort too if she held her arm above the water: which granted her to see… a little less nothing than without it. She could see impromptu waterfalls coming from the higher ground beside this channel, in fact: after ten minutes of ‘walking’ it felt like the water was still rising. Of  _ course  _ it was, when she finally got out of this gigantic wave pool and the ceiling dropped way down, the water was over her shoulders. It was going to be easier to  _ swim  _ again, she couldn’t see anything with the little space she had above. 

Ok though, focus on the task at hand rather than how upset you are… 

Right, if she recalled correctly-

Toriel sighed and submerged her head, she grunted with effort as both of her claws lit up with a lot more intensity. The  _ murkiness  _ was just unreal, she could barely see even  _ with  _ the light. 

-She wasn’t too far from the glimmering canals?... The part of Waterfall with the really bright water and all the pretty flora, ok? She was back to the system of narrow tunnels and such, having to push floating chunks of debris out of her way.

‘Is that a  _ door?’ _

There was the wall of uninteresting rock, and then suddenly a really out of place door. 

‘What is a  _ door  _ doing there? Why would there be a-’

It wasn’t important, what  _ was  _ important was how terrible this water was! Toriel was already beyond uncomfortable from the damn temperature, but her  _ eyes _ : it wasn’t comfortable opening them underwater for the last stretch of her swim, but here? It just flat out  _ hurt.  _ She couldn’t bear it any longer and closed her eyes just to rub them to make that feeling  _ stop.  _

Suddenly,  ** _*BUMP* _ **

Toriel’s snout hit something a little less immovable than a boardwalk, she shuddered from the little surprise and squinted her irritated eyes to get a look and her bearings. The murkiness had become almost blinding, the visibility was just shy of a meter. When she opened her eyes, there was no mistaking the face staring her down in the water. 

Her shrill scream went well with her flailing movements to get away that kicked up more dust and debris into her face. The panic lasted a total of ten seconds, subsiding from her ability to see the relatively static figure the face was attached to. It just floated there, only moving from the transmitted disturbance she made in the water. When she realized it was inert, Toriel would collect herself and examine this thing. 

It was a soldier, the bright American flag on their shoulder was a giveaway. They were also dead… That glazed look on their face, staring at everything and seeing nothing. With no visible injuries or traces of magic attacks perceptible to her… Toriel only thought that they must’ve  _ drowned.  _ She couldn’t truly relate to what is like having to ‘breathe’ air every few seconds to stay alive, but to be cut off from ‘living’ like that sounded just ghastly. She suffered another shudder, even though the soldiers were  _ bad _ , it was a terrible fate! What if Brainz succumbed to the same thing and  _ he  _ was floating lifelessly somewhere? 

‘God, please no, I can not bear to see that,  _ please be alright.’ _

As she swam around the deceased soldier, she repeated her thoughts over and over again, each laden with more emotion and desperation as she fumbled and pulled herself around.

‘Please be alright,  _ Please  _ be alright,  ** _please…’ _ **

The ‘shimmering canals’ weren’t so shimmering, there was nothing but darkness and murkiness. Toriel would only find dead echo flowers and deceased flora with roots that had given up and let the remains float around in this festering pool of death. It was  _ ceaseless:  _ partial collapses here, schools of floating debris there, and eventually another  _ body.  _ This one was surrounded by clouds of red polluting the water. It felt like  _ forever  _ had passed since she had gone underwater ( _ Any  _ amount of time in this hellish labyrinth was too far too long), the way whatever path she chose though, had an incline. The look on her face when she could not only see a way out, but actually being able to  _ see  _ it from the light it was emitting. Toriel never swam so fast. 

She burst from the boundary of the flooded corridor and crawled away until she had moved meters away from it. Toriel had never been so happy to be huddled on the ground, sopping wet and shivering violently. She looked up from her puddle and around at her surroundings, she was on a long and quite narrow path with two huge pools of water on both sides of it: at least these ones looked like they belonged there and weren’t overstepping their boundaries. What probably didn’t belong there were the burning chunks of debris floating in both pools, or the hole in the ceiling dropping more garbage engulfed with flames into the room. So she knew where the light was coming from at least… and the overwhelming smoke in the air that made her want to cry. 

No really, Toriel was unsure as to what was keeping her from flat out bursting into tears right now. She still got up to her feet and looked down at herself. She looked like hell: her fur was matting up and stuck together in places from the mud and filth, it was also turning sort of “pinkish” no idea what was causing that. But what really got to her for some strange reason: was the large tear in her robe just below her knees. It must’ve torn from the snag she ran into. When she saw this damage to her now  _ filthy  _ attire, she emitted this casual sigh. 

“Ohh… I do not think I am going to be capable of  _ mending  _ this.”

Then she starting crying. 

Of all the things she’d witnessed, it took a torn robe to reduce her to a sobbing mess. She sat there and cried while the world crumbled around her, it was everything her worst nightmares and anxieties could conceive and more. She was still so far from comprehending how this could all be really happening, that she never saw it coming. What a ‘silly’ old lady, ‘Silly, silly, silly’ crying over a torn robe while her last child was in danger of death, but that was what made her stop the tears, at least the partially debilitating ones. 

With herself still quivering and shaking, Toriel had almost forgotten she could warm herself back up. The cold on her dissipated into steam and it felt nice, she felt a little better. She was back up and in a hurry from the time she had lost. A muffled explosion echoing from the hole in the ceiling preceded the next quake, Toriel wouldn’t get to stay as dry for long: the new chunks of debris hitting the water hit her with an impressive splash. She just sighed morosely and left the room before it deteriorated anymore. 

At this point, all the disorientation and environmental chaos had left Toriel without a clue where she was. Her memory would’ve only served her so much if everything wasn’t falling apart: but maybe it seemed that the world was going to provide her with a  _ hint  _ of sorts. A hint in the form of a wrecked looking piano in the middle of the path. Forget that ‘door’ being out of place,  _ this  _ took the cake. 

What was a  _ piano  _ doing here? 

It was covered with dust, with some smaller piles sitting beside it.

How many pianos did the underground  _ house?  _

‘Wait a moment…’

Her caution was ignored, Toriel approached the ruined thing, almost in a trance-like infatuation to it as it stood lopsided in the middle of a small chamber. There were dragmarks in the mud that traveled all the way to a sideroom off the path, this piano was  _ not  _ supposed to be here and Toriel soon realized that it wasn’t supposed to be in that sideroom either: she knew exactly where it was  _ supposed  _ to be. 

Her limbs began to tremble, her thoughts went silent: slowly did she open the lid on top, it was barely attached. Overlooking the ruined guts of the once precious instrument, she found what she was looking for , what she hoped she  _ wouldn’t  _ find. The worn paperback.

** _How to build a piano in only 1001 easy steps!_ **

She felt something inside of her sink to her core, but she kept to her inspection with the calmest of movements. Painted on the back of the piano, marred by the many holes and splinters, the same rune that was displayed on her attire. There was only one more thing to find, as redundant as it was. Even though one of the legs was destroyed, just above the broken limb was the smallest chip in the wood, done by an act of play just a little too rough for the instrument. 

This was his piano… 

She remembered it by the overjoyed look on his little face when they presented it to him, all the weeks of building and sneaking around to keep it a surprise. It was the sour notes plucked in the process of learning the songs that made them so endearing… 

This was  _ his _ piano, and someone  _ destroyed it:  _ dragged it through the mud and broke it apart, filled it with holes and left it here to  _ rot  _ and be forgotten. The growl sounded guttural if not muted, it came from a place deep inside of her.

“Who.  _ Did this?...”  _

This absolutely contemptuous thing, she could’ve been helpless to question who would even possess such a lack of sympathy and decency to do this, but she felt too angry to even think straight. Rather than to express it, Toriel kept it within her to sizzle and boil: after all, she couldn’t spare the time for this no matter how strong it affected her. 

There were some more informative placards lining the wall, but Toriel really didn’t care for them at this point. She wanted to begin a new rule not to stop for anything  ** _personal _ ** to her because it would slow her down… then she saw the blood on the ground.

The spatters started not too far from her late son’s desecrated keepsake. Toriel had a hunch that they would lead her to the culprit of the vandalism and then… She really didn’t know what she would do next. 

There was some light coming from a leaking hole in the ceiling, and there was her suspected culprit, soaking in their own blood while laying slumped against a decaying statue. 

‘ _ No…’  _

She knew where she was now. If anything would hit her memories, it would be one of the last decisions she and Asgore had shared: the stone memorial to their lost children. It would hold the impact and memories they held on this world forever, never to forget…  _ and they VANDALIZED  _ it. There was barely anything  _ left,  _ the center of it had completely caved in and what  _ was  _ left was covered in  _ blood!  _ This soldier propped up against it, clutching their hideous tool in their cold hands.

Even as they were  _ dying,  _ they wouldn’t let go of their hatred: and to  _ desecrate  _ these vestiges of her  _ SON?  _ That people like  _ THEM,  _ ** _slaughtered?! _ **

She wouldn’t  ** _ALLOW IT. _ **

Searing hot tears welled in her eyes, her teeth locked together and she emitted this deep and guttural  ** _snarl. _ ** She just as quickly discovered the state of statue as she suddenly seized the dead body by its shoulders and hurled it into the wall behind her with tremendous force: if the soldier wasn’t deceased already, this impact would’ve killed them indefinitely. Large cracks formed into the wall as a now unfastened helmet rolled away.

She glared at the mangled corpse with such fervor for one moment, and then with an intentful swipe: she cast her flame onto it.

  
  


She turned away, the fire engulfing the body did not hold her attention any longer nor did this crack in her temper: Toriel just kneeled at the damaged statue and ran her burning claws over it, stroking what was left of the head. She whispered in the softest way, maternally.

“Oh dear,  _ look _ at you. You have gotten all  _ messy  _ again. You silly boy…”

Try as she did, to wipe it all away, twitching every now and then as the corpse behind her smoldered into something unrecognizable. Toriel only stopped when her latest stroke severed a small piece of rock from the shrine. She collected  _ herself  _ first, and then she picked up the stone and brought it to her face. The last tear ran down her face, and she whispered. 

“It will all be alright soon. We will do this  _ together,  _ children…” 

Her lips touched the cold surface, and Toriel slipped the piece of stone into a hidden pocket on her attire. She gave the really foul smelling pile of burning flesh only a glance before standing up and getting back on her way out of here.

Unfortunately, less than a minute of walking lead her to discover that she could not continue this way. A wall comprised entirely of felled rocks blocked her path. There was no mystery to it, especially when another earthquake came by and added  _ more  _ to the pile. Not one to turn back after what she had just been put through, Toriel twitched and introduced some fast moving balls of fire to the debris. She made the barrage go faster and faster, putting more force into her attacks as the futility rose. A frustrated growl died down to a forlorn sigh: all her provoked attempt did was create more debris, she  _ had  _ to go back and find another way: and that meant… 

Toriel resentfully descended back down the waterlogged staircase. She spent another fifteen minutes near blindly searching underwater for another way: either discovering two more drowned soldiers or circling the same body two more times…

Anyway, Toriel was able to partially resurface in a new area, she had to note that the only reason she could was because the water was still draining somewhere: she had to work against the moving current. She found herself in a room with five choices of paths, waist high in a moderately strong current that was mostly going forward. And it seemed she wasn’t  _ alone  _ in the water. 

There were numerous things flowing from this one path down the stream. Looked like: soggy cardboard boxes, broken lamps, deflated tires? Ohhhh, wait… she knew where she was: the dump was just down the way, providing all of the rubbish. So Toriel was now in the same water as a couple of tons of garbage… 

‘ _ Wonderful.’ _

There was no ‘lifting her robes up’ to keep them out of this disgusting soup: they were already as filthy as she was… a bath and a wash basin never seemed so coveted yet unobtainable. Toriel already figured she was probably going to have to continue going straight, that’s where the flow wanted to take her anyway. She looked down the other paths tho as she trudged through, one charred looking pile of what used to be a house (maybe?) had her questioning what occured here before she arrived… And an identical pair of ransacked looking houses almost had her questioning if she should investigate them. But what got her attention, almost  _ right away,  _ was the distinctive sound she was able to hear over the whooshing of the water. 

It sounded like sniffling, she couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from: but she definitely stopped for it. Toriel called out many times, having to balance the needed volume in her voice with a caring and non threatening tone.

“ _ Hello? Is somebody there? Are you alright? It is alright, I can help you!”  _

But nobody answered back, maybe that wasn’t crying she heard.  Or maybe they knew better than to accept  _ her  _ help.  She fell into another depression in the floor, it was  _ fine:  _ it wasn’t like she even tried to dry herself anyway. Toriel was beginning to suspect and  _ expect  _ this kind of thing from her life now. Forward she went, the only light in this enveloping darkness. As she followed the ill placed river, Toriel came across another set of deviations from the path. One of the was a set of stairs that would mean another swim through a completely flooded passage:  _ pass.  _ The other was the entrance to a small, undeveloped looking cavern, there was a sign above the entrance that possibly denoted what it was, but the water damage made it illegible. 

She was only going to peer inside for a moment, just to make sure it was vacant: but something made her stay just a little bit longer, combating the push of the water. There were pieces of what looked like  _ armor  _ or something, bumping against the edge of the entrance from the fluctuating water. These were  _ old  _ too, Toriel hadn’t seen  _ that  _ variation of the deltarune since… well there was actually only one person she ever saw it with. 

There was something else floating around in the dirty water too, behind some kind of counter: it looked like an explorer’s hat. 

…

“Oh my god,  _ Gerson…”  _

The one and only ‘Hammer of Justice’, one of the friendliest old coots you could’ve met. When Toriel was young, Gerson still fit in his armor, the stories he told her, too… 

He was dead now, they killed him too. One of the grandest and wisest of monsters, and he was  _ gone  _ just like that. His legacy was defaced just as Toriel’s children were: she was starting to believe in ‘Evil’ at this point. She didn’t want to… she  _ never  _ did, there was no reason at all to call someone or something ‘Evil’ to her, they always had their side of the story, a reason for their actions.  _ Maybe the truth was with her the whole time, that flower… and now these soldiers. _

Even with the mix of lies and exaggerations they must’ve told her about Brainz, that word  _ never  _ came into her thoughts for him. These soldiers were giving her doubts on everything she knew, while they were out pillaging it. 

“I am  _ so  _ sorry…”

She had to leave the little space on that. She  _ had  _ to keep moving. Toriel was running out of time and she had to  _ hurry.  _ She followed the flow with purpose, overlooking the lines of mostly dead echo flowers, and enduring two more waterfalls turned into hazardous showers.

All this water was going somewhere, and in a damn hurry too. Toriel was about to find  _ where _ , when she started to hear  _ white noise.  _ Louder and louder as she got closer, the white noise morphed into more of a thunderous roaring that nullified any other sound. Toriel would only be able to hear her own thoughts, barely too. She didn’t even her own surprised exclamation at the drop she discovered. 

_ So this is where the water is draining. _

The biggest pit she had ever seen in her entire life with water pouring into it from  _ everywhere,  _ she took more than enough care not to let the water send her into the pit too.

‘I  _ really  _ do  ** _not _ ** remember  ** _ever _ ** having to pass a massive  ** _pit _ ** like  ** _this _ ** on my walks!’

She felt herself freeze up everytime she looked into it, it may have been absolutely dark but she could see the reflection of her flame on all the running water, this room was unequivocally ginormous: how were they having issues of overcrowding in the past if they had spaces  _ this  _ big?! Nevermind all the flooding, how were you supposed to traverse this deathtrap in the first place? 

‘Ohhh no no  _ noo!  _ ** _Please _ ** tell me I am  _ not  _ seeing this!’

She found the way, alright. One grassy and soaked (So that meant slippery!) path that was less than half a meter wide! All suspended over the bottomless pit while being  ** _unlit _ ** and without  ** _any _ ** safety features whatsoever! And again, besides the  _ water:  _ this looks like it was BUILT to be like this!

‘I swear, if the soldiers have not killed him- if  _ Brainz  _ has not killed him-  ** _I _ ** am going to  _ kill  _ Asgore!’

The frustrated growl she made was the last bit of stalling she did before beginning this particular ordeal. 

Toriel was not walking for this one, no matter how fast she wanted to be through with this: she got down to her belly and shuffled up the path while holding onto it for dear life.

‘I am going to kill him…. I am  _ going  _ to  _ kill  _ him…’ 

She didn’t even know where she was going, really: this place was developing into some kind of labyrinth and all she had was sense of touch for where she could go. That is… until she looked up and saw a dim light just ahead of where she was! Toriel dared to feel relief as she inched for it… So the world began to tremble again-

‘ _ Oh god NO!’  _

-and she scampred for that light while bleating indescribably. The ground became bigger under her and she was surrounded by walls again, Toriel gave herself the moment to lay there until the tremoring stopped in her and the underground itself. She groaned miserably and got back to her feet to- find four soldiers lying in the flickering gaze of a discarded lantern on the ground. Toriel was instantly thrown off from the sight though, there was something disturbingly different about how these ones. Instead of being sprawled out on the ground, covered in their own blood: three of the soldiers were lined up beside each other with their arms folded onto their chests, their weapons were tucked under their arms and their helmets were tilted over their faces. Somebody had gone through all the trouble to arrange them like that, like some kind of impromptu burial. The fourth soldier though, perhaps the one who did all this… was laying with their head rested against an empty box, their jacket was draped over them like a blanket. It looked almost as if they were asleep.

Toriel was gripped with dread and beyond hesitant to approach them, but as she gazed upon the one… seeing the drying blood staining their lips and the jacket soaked in it: she realized they were dead. They all were dead: Toriel couldn’t even sense their SOULs fluttering like any living beings’ should have been, because they simply didn’t have them anymore. 

She approached the one fallen soldier and noticed they had something sitting atop their jacket, a little piece of paper. It was  _ more  _ than a piece of paper though, it was a photo. The same soldier with his arm around some pretty lady in front of a christmas tree, their hands were clasped together and both bore little gold rings.

She stared at those smiling faces until her heart lurched, Toriel shook her head and dropped the photo.

“Uhn-uh…  _ uhn-uhh.”  _

Toriel was overcome with a great need to leave this place, she hurried along without an additional thought or delay: going until she was faced with a dead end. It was marked with a crude sign.

[TEM SHOP](https://youtu.be/C6qdp5yeE6Y)

  
  



	5. Nothing makes sense anymore...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11:00:00  
10:59:59  
10:59:58  
...

Toriel wanted to scream because it happened  _ again.  _ It wasn’t that she had an even bigger burden on her than before, or the fact that she could have  _ avoided  _ this. What this really meant was that she was going to have to return to the traumatic maze to actually get out of here. Where she was, it was some kind of crevice in the rock just littered with papers and various pieces of trash on the floor. Some kind of shop or at least that's what she thought of.

She tried fruitlessly to find a hidden switch or lever that would open up an even better hidden door or something: and only when that was for nothing, did she come to terms and yell in utter frustration and implied helplessness. It made her feel a little better when she was done, but she still had to turn back. 

Back to the bigger room, there were a couple of things she evidently overlooked in relation to the bodies on the first glance: a statue of a cute looking monster (A further look and she would notice that it was made of paper mache) and just beside the ‘married’ soldier, there was a...  _ hodgepodge  _ things. It looked like a platform or something made out of driftwood and glitter tape. Toriel saw the delta rune on it too… a tattered flag was repurposed into what looked like a sail. This was a pontoon made of junk and just  _ covered  _ in glitter and stickers. There was a small sandwich baggie on top full of various pieces of hole punched construction paper and a crude note.

** _HUman take raft Aftur Nap. Have PROVizins, no CosT!_ **

Well now she was just confused and even more depressed, like she needed more on her mind. At least whoever arranged this wasn’t going to realize that the human was never going to wake up. An audible earth tremor that put huge cracks in the ceiling let Toriel know that she really needed to go. When she got to the exit and froze up with her legs trembling and heart racing, a piece of the ceiling fell down and almost hit her in the head:  _ that  _ was the world telling her to get on with it. 

Back on her belly and back in the mud, the tremor had just ended, so she had time before the next one would hit. She inched along a different path and prayed it would lead her to safety. As she did though, she couldn’t help but to ‘think’, and there were only ‘ _ those’  _ thoughts taking up her head, the ones she did not wish to entertain. She had to distract herself though, it was either  _ that _ : or thinking about just how harrowing a spot she was in right now… God forbid she look  _ down.  _ She chose the less traumatizing choice, it was only slightly better than thinking about falling to her screaming death. 

The one human… that  _ wasn’t  _ just a soldier: he was someone’s husband. His life wasn’t just his own… it belonged to others too, his family. When atrocities were all you could attribute to these people, it was real easy to overlook that they had lives too. Toriel just didn’t  _ get it  _ though-

Hold up, she heard something make a peculiar splashing noise from behind… Maybe it was nothing: at least that’s what it had to be by  _ now…  _

-Anyway… yeah, she wasn’t quite understanding something about all this. The same humans who were slaughtering everyone and putting so many more lives in jeopardy: the  _ same  _ ones who would desecrate the memory of a  ** _child!, _ ** had loved ones of their own and their own rituals too. Things like this were why Toriel couldn’t just demonize humanity as a whole when everyone else was ready to start another war! She couldn’t understand the unanimous reasoning monsters had back  _ then,  _ and she couldn’t understand the unanimous reason these soldiers had,  _ NOW.  _ And what was the deal with  _ Brainz  _ and the soldiers? The more she thought of it all, the more she felt like she was missing something bigger and big-

‘Hoo boy….’

Toriel found another ‘exit’ to the ‘fun maze’ after ten minutes of shuffling and being audibly assaulted by the sound of the falls below. The water pouring out of it was in the largest volume she had seen so far, it was up to the ceiling of the passage and holding steady like it wasn’t going to empty or lessen anytime soon. If Toriel wanted to get out this way… she was going to have to go  _ through  _ all that and hope it doesn’t overpower her and push her into the gaping pit,  ** _OR _ ** she could turn back and spend more time here, looking for another way out!    
  


She said a quick prayer and braced herself before standing up and taking the current, head on. It hit her,  _ hard.  _ The flow was so powerful that Toriel was almost instantly swept away by it, but she did hold her ground. What she did was crouch forward and dig her claws into the soft earth lining the inundated pass. Her flame went out immediately, there was no sustaining it here: all she could do was fight the flow and force herself against it. Toriel already regretted her decision in full, and it was already too late to turn back without being sent flying:  _ but she had a duty, and by god she wasn’t going to let a little FLOODING stop her…  _

The water pushed her with tremendous force, but she pushed  ** _harder. _ ** The flow accomplished inches against her, but she trembled with effort and gained  _ meters  _ against it. Toriel trudged through with everything she had, inching further and further away from the outlet… until she felt the flow change directions and was unprepared for a surge to hit her from the side. In that moment, she lost her grip and was sent tumbling down a whole new direction. 

It was back to being a sweater in the washer machine for her, albeit with a little more terror than last time and with a lot more  _ pain.  _ She had a new group of sensations aside from the stabbing cold and disorienting tumbling: there was a  ** _BUMP _ ** to her head here and she  ** _BANGED _ ** her side into something  _ there,  _ she was being thrown into walls or floors or  _ ceilings  _ like it was nothing! Suddenly, Toriel was free from the water just like that, it was like it had  _ ejected  _ her from its embrace. She sensed it right away because her yells became clearer and she felt herself soaring through the air. Toriel had less than a second to comprehend anything before  ** _*CRASH!!!* _ ** she landed with a terrible impact onto a hard and unforgiving surface where she rolled and tumbled some more before finally coming to a stop. 

It hurt,  _ a lot.  _

Toriel writhed on the ground for a moment, grimacing and moaning softly. This was a new level of miserable for her today but at least the world stopped moving.

** _-KRA-AKK-_ **

Or maybe not… 

This was this really loud splintering noise that she could  _ feel,  _ right under her. Toriel only lifted her head up when an even louder sound came and she felt the entire ground lurch. It was pitch black, but she could see  ** _RED _ ** just in front of her face, a copious amount of it. The anxiety pushed all of her pain out of precedence and Toriel struggled to manifest a flame to grant her sight.

  
  
  


‘Come on, Tori.  _ Come on.  _ ** _Come on._ ** _ ’ _

Her one claw projected a weak and flickering light, but it was enough to see again and that was all she needed. She desperately looked up from where she lay, to the glowing stains. There was nothing though, nobody either. She was sharing a wooden dock or bridge with the stains and-

She looked over shoulder to a void of blackness below, It was a bridge: one that was shaking and moving and making increasingly audible sounds of wood straining. 

** _-KRACKKK!!!-_ **

This one was a  _ big  _ one, she flinched when she saw a charred looking board in front of her split in half. It sounded like more were giving away behind her. While she hadn’t the slightest of where she was now, Toriel was all too certain that she should get off this thing, because the ground in front of her was starting to get higher...

She had to get up and move, faster,  _ faster,  _ ** _FASTER: it’s giving away! _ ** The entire structure dropped another meter, one side slipped far more than the other and turned it into a steep ramp to give her even more resistance. The whole thing was sliding now, it was about to go: Toriel saw solid ground and was already running for it, it wasn’t going to be enough! There was one last near  _ deafening  _ breaking sound and Toriel leapt from the falling wood: she barely made the jump and tripped on the edge of the ground. She hit the solid ground just in sync with the bridge disintegrating and hitting the water below with a huge  ** _*SPLASH!* _ **

There was a bit of a delay to her realization that she just narrowly escaped death. ( _ Again  _ even!)

‘Oh my god…’

It was easy for her to decree that she never wanted to wanted to see water ever again, and that her aversion to swimming was now completely legitimate if not justified beyond any naysay. 

  
  


She was able to lay there and look back at the dangling cables over the trench, having to curb her surprise and shocked panting. 

‘Wait a minute! That did  _ not  _ collapse solely because of  _ me!  _ It must have been already  _ damaged-  _ it was  _ destined  _ to do that.’ 

She would get back to her feet and brush herself up a bit just to turn her back to the gap and sneer at it. As long as she was abdicating the blame, this shoddy design was probably Asgore’s fault too. Realistically speaking too; Brainz probably had a part in this.  _ Speaking  _ of Brainz… 

‘My  _ god,  _ what  _ happened  _ here?’

While the bridge was thoroughly stained with RED, the ground in front of her had  _ so  _ much more. Spread everywhere by bootprints, smears, and smudges… and  _ dust.  _ There was just as much monster dust, but it was in  ** _clumps, _ ** and it was also red! It looked like he had gotten into an intense fight with a monster or  _ something,  _ and they just tore each other apart. Yet, she didn’t find him lying nearby in a puddle of himself nor did she find a big pile of dust even though there was enough of both forms of life shedded to kill a monster and human alike. This was really nerve wracking for her though, Brainz could be hurting in the worst of ways right now and she wouldn’t be able to help him if he succumbed to whatever injuries he sustained. Toriel really had to move. 

“ _ OW!”  _

She had been tiptoeing cautiously to avoid stepping in the mess when a sharp pain suddenly shot up from her foot. Toriel stumbled from it and ended up planting said foot right into the hazardous color: the burning sensation amplified the pain. 

“ _ OwwWWOOOHH!”  _

She frantically hopped away from the mess and sat onto the ground while clutching her ailing foot and wincing. Toriel saw the nasty liquid on her foot and was quick to scrape it off, she had felt discomfort when coming into contact with the RED before… but this was basically  ** _acid _ ** at this point. She really wanted to know how Brainz even functioned with this stuff inside of him, but right now she was more curious about what hurt her foot in the first place. Toriel ended up pulling out a long and gnarled nail from her foot before getting up again, it only made her mental depictions of what happened here more grim.

She was back to speed walking (And being thankful she wasn’t SWIMMING) and she found herself at the mouth of a spiky and menacing cave.  _ Maybe  _ this was familiar and a good thing? Toriel really wasn’t sure of anything anymore: her head was not in a good place, she was perpetually frightened, filthy, hurt, soaking wet, and cold. She didn’t bother to dry herself off this time-

‘What for? I am just going to get soaked again.’

-She thought.

An old ‘familiar’ sound came to her, the distinctive hissing of steam. Toriel sighed in frustration.

“What  _ now??”  _

The water was  _ below  _ her this time, and in a place where it actually looked like it belonged for once! Oh, but it  _ was  _ steaming a whole bunch like the feed channel was. Well, if she was seeing the feed channel again, then that would mean that she must be in the median between Waterfall and Hotland. If that was the case… then Toriel could not have made it here  _ soon enough:  _ no more water! Well, except the steam coming from below… and the clouds of it up in the ceiling. 

‘Ohhh,  _ Hotland!  _ Thank  _ god.’ _

She smiled and closed her weary eyes for a moment when she began to feel the warmth wrapping around her like a blanket. It was the most comforting thing she had felt all day, one of the few things that tried to assure here that it all could turn out ‘OK’ in the end. The good feeling though wasn’t alone… it was actually starting to be overshadowed by the growing presence of steam. There was supposed to be  _ less  _ of it the further she strayed from all the water… 

It became denser and  _ denser  _ as the temperature rose. For Toriel, heat was  _ nothing,  _ but the steam was so overbearing that she wasn’t even drying anymore. She had gotten her five seconds of relief, and now it was time to worry. She couldn’t even look for the massive sign to welcome her to the new area, though she was sure that it was probably not working, but still. All she could do was walk with her arms reaching out blindly. 

‘Ooh. Is it  _ me,  _ or has Hotland become, ‘ _ hotter?’’  _

So, the heat  _ was  _ ‘nothing’ or at least that’s how she remembered it, but it was still rising and was becoming really uncomfortable for her.  _ That  _ was not supposed to happen, when did Toriel ever get too hot? Well, whatever the case was… it was  _ too hot!  _ Her eyes were squinting and she was internally whining from the extreme environment, and this god forsaken  _ steam  _ that wouldn’t go away was  _ not  _ making her feel any better. She couldn’t see a thing and she was feeling incredibly oppressed, to the point that this was almost as bad as the freezing bath. 

Just when she thought this would reach the limit of worsening: Toriel began to make out a glow through the searing corridor, amidst various sounds attributed to Hotland’s ambience. She knew she was in for another harrowing trek across a flimsy looking bridge, but once she got out of this confined space, the steam would dissipate: so she was sort of happy to get here. Then she actually walked into the open space…

“Oooh.  _ My.  _ ** _God…” _ **

Well… at least she found out where all the steam was coming from, somewhere below: there was a breach in the rock and the excess water from Waterfall was pouring into Hotland at an unprecedented volume. She also was able to notice that the pool of magma below had risen so high that she would’ve evaporated by now.  ** _That is… _ ** if it hadn’t all been cooled into rock from all the water. This was a sight that no monster had or should have ever witnessed, and it was also a good marker of just how little time was left to act, and Toriel was left without further words or appropriate thoughts. But  _ hey…  _ at least she wouldn’t have to cross another perilous bridge, because there  _ was  _ no bridge to cross. 

Toriel was faint on the spot, but every involuntary glance at the sight before her was more sobering than the last. Her first thought after minutes of gawking, was something disheartening. 

‘ ** _How. _ ** Am I to  _ cross  _ this?!’

The steam rising from below still made it hard to see anything, Toriel could barely see the other side of the gorge with sharp squinting and bending forward. She couldn’t even see the cavernous ceiling beyond the layer of blistering hot clouds. 

‘What am I going to  _ do??  _ I-I-i do not  _ know!’  _

She began to whine and twitch uncomfortably as the sting of failing wound her up. She would refuse to turn back and find another way, but there  _ was  _ no other way. She  _ had  _ to get through this, but she  _ couldn’t.  _ Toriel tried her best to resist the panic, but it was finding its way through her, this extreme heat wasn’t helping the slightest bit either. No human would be able to survive in this environment, and she expected this would apply to less resistant monsters too. For  _ her  _ though: Toriel felt like she would need to shield herself if she wanted to spend five more minutes in here. 

And that’s when an idea reared its head, she wouldn’t pull it out of the ground until she took another look over the edge of the ground. As expected, it made her cringe, but not  _ too  _ much. It was a considerable drop, but the way the lava hardened: it wouldn’t be too difficult to scale… that is if it wasn’t hot enough to melt anything that touched it, except for  _ her,  _ potentially. Toriel stepped away from the edge and emitted her flame for her to inspect. It would burn anything it touched if she wanted it to, but never herself: because everytime she performed fire magic, she would cast a barrier on her claws to protect them from the heat. She could grab pans and tins fresh from the stove without even flinching when she did. 

Toriel never thought of applying the barrier to her entire being though…

‘I wonder if it would  _ work…’  _

It wasn’t like she had any other options or the time to look for others. 

Toriel cleared her mind the best she could, and focused: it was like baking, only  _ bigger!  _ She focused her magic and felt the heat all around her dissipating. It was working  _ so  _ far, but she could already feel the tax on herself. Her entire form glew faintly, as if she was wearing a suit. She gained a little bit of confidence, which made holding this just a little easier: but now came the hard part. 

She reapproached the edge of the cliff and focusing on her magic became  _ that  _ much more difficult. She almost slipped, she  _ almost  _ lost her nerve, she  ** _almost _ ** reconsidered… But then she thought about what would happen to everyone, to  _ Brainz…  _ And then you couldn’t stop her from climbing down. Toriel clambered down the volcanic slope and slid down nearly half of the way, her barrier was actually working: she could  _ feel  _ the heat beating down all around her, trying to wear her down and break her shield. 

It felt like she was walking on hot coals, Toriel would put more of her focus onto her feet and step quickly but carefully through the pass. This was a surreal experience, she was walking on top of  ** _lava, _ ** this was a good addition to the list of the craziest things she had ever done: established a few hours ago. She had made it halfway across and could make out the other side again (The steam down here was really bad) when the sound of rumbling grew louder from beneath her. Bad timing, but what could the earthquake do to her while she was down here? Then came the  ** _*CRACK*. _ ** There was a whole procession of them, it sounded like something was coming apart, but  _ what?  _

** _*FWOOSH!* _ **

Toriel nearly fell back, suddenly: a fissure burst from the ground just in front of her: sending red hot rocks and orange spittle in every direction. Some of the smallest of droplets landed on her clothes, they felt like bullets drilling into her as her barrier was not enough for them: Toriel put out the burning spots on her right away but another terrifyingly loud crack came from behind and she felt the burning on her back. 

In the moment she extinguished herself, this idea became her worst one yet. The remarkably thin crust she walked on was no match for the powerful vibrations: it began to break apart as pressurized magma  _ exploded  _ all around Toriel. Her magic was already disrupted from her fear and surprise, she would stand no chance against the liquid hot flooding back into the area… so she ran for her life again while bleating uncontrollably and screaming in terror (internally). 

Fissures in the ground spread instantaneously like damage to glass, there was no outrunning them or the molten rock they spat out, Toriel would be sprayed with burning from all around her. It was a such an exquisite and delicate kind of ‘agony’, the pain was uniform and extreme: but the high terror almost nullified it as she sprinted for the still solid formations to escape. Her garment would restrict her movement no longer as it had torn from the bottom up from the damage and stress from the running.

The explosions from behind were almost deafening. Toriel slammed into the rock and madly scratched and clawed at it, looking for a way to climb it up. No way, too smooth, death impending, she could feel the heat closing from behind her. 

Her claws suddenly lit up to a blistering red color, Toriel balled them into fists and struck the stone as hard as she could: pounding melon sized chunks out and giving herself the means to climb up. It wasn’t even climbing, she had gone into a loop of blasting holes above her then  _ leaping  _ up from the previous ones: and with such  _ speed  _ and precision. It had happened so fast that the next thing she knew; Toriel was laying on the ground trying to come to terms with everything. 

If anything, she could’ve done with a lay down… ‘exhausted’ was starting to fall a bit short of what she felt, her entire self hurt like hell; but hey, she was still  ** _ALIVE. _ ** A wave of volatile magma crashed nearby and she had to interrupt her little ‘break’ to avoid a rather anticlimactic death. She sprinted for an additional meter or two and tripped on her own clumsiness again.

‘Oooohh I hate my life…’ 

She was allowed to say that, right? This  _ was  _ the kind of hell she felt she deserved so she didn’t question it really, but she did not have to enjoy it by any means. Toriel always felt odd about proclaiming this disposition to life itself, but she felt she saying this  _ long  _ before Brainz showed up and brought his hellish reality with him. Only now though, as she narrowly avoided death but was still dodging its blistering hot swings and swipes, did she really feel no aversion to admitting it. Life was a cold and heartless bitch and everyone playing its game has already lost. She was never meant to be happy, everything she was given was only to be taken away sooner or later… 

There was another explosion that sent a huge geyser of lava up into the clouded ceiling. Toriel would have the time to sit and brood later, but for now she had to make urgently for shelter inside of this big and imposing building down the path. While it was just as low and susceptible to molten doom, it was still standing and that was enough for her. 

As she ran (More like shambled) for the structure, something made her turn her head. It looked like a giant metal tube sinking into the lava. The heat had made its material much more pliable and the way it warped and sagged, it almost looked like a big worm emerging from the molten lake. 

‘LAB’

That’s what a big sign posted on the building read. 

‘ _ Oh!  _ The lab! Of course!’

This was actually a  _ very  _ good thing: Toriel would have access to a bunch of buttons and dials and levers and gauges, of which she would be the second to last person to have an idea of what they actually did but they probably had the ability to help the situation! She would have all the time in her world to figure it out…  _ after  _ she saved Brainz’s life though, he came first. It would be good to get an appraisal of what she would be dealing with though. (And to not die from being outside). 

But already, her faith had withered when saw blood just beyond the entrance which looked like it had been ripped open by some means. Then she walked in and was instantly assaulted by this fetid odor that dominated the room. It reeked of death and iron and became the worst smell Toriel had ever experienced in her life: she had to fight with her own urges to get away from it, it was that bad. Everything only worsened as she pushed inside.

The lab was dead, not a single light was on: the power was long gone from it. She could just see though; from the orange glow emanating from the world behind her to the various fires eating away at the room’s exposed guts. There was something immediately obvious though: Toriel could see these blue…  _ spikes? Arrowheads?  _ These blue spearheads, sticking out of every surface and faintly glowing with residual magic. It looked like something exploded and sent them flying in every direction. She really did not want to know what happened here, but she would have no choice as she entered further into the lab: following the trail of blood that simmered. 

She still needed to emit her own light, it felt a lot harder to do at this point: the smell and the despair were getting to her. When she did though, she screamed in shock. There were bodies (Devoid of souls, so she didn’t sense them before) that she could’ve been used to seeing at this point, but the state they were in: she was never going to be OK with it. 

It was so hot in here… the bodies were  _ cooking.  _ Their flesh was blistering and bubbling, literally off of their faces. Their wounds were steaming and turning dark colors. Some of the bodies were pinned to the walls by the spearheads. The glimpse into her nightmare only became more lucid when she deliberately looked away from the carnage to see a small crater in the floor with a starburst of red dust around it. Laying in the center, was another sweater: yellow stripes, another child. It was seemingly untouched by all the destruction around it. 

Toriel fell to her knees and slowly grasped the little garment in her claws. She took one more look around at all the doom and gloom around her and she couldn’t stop herself from pressing the ownerless sweater to her face and breaking down again. 


	6. Everything is gone...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10:22:42  
10:22:41  
10:22:40  
...

The time came that Toriel had to put the sweater down and square up, all on good time as she wasn’t even sure she had tears to weep anymore. Her heart felt like it was going numb, and whatever moisture was on her face was evaporating from the heat. Toriel took a quivering breath, wiped her face, and placed the little garment on the ground after folding it up. She knew at this point that the lab was no more than a mass grave. There was nothing here for her but bad memories of lost children.

She really had no desire to see the rest of the room, but her intentions dragged her to do otherwise. Toriel did not make any effort to avoid the steaming puddles anymore, her feet were already covered with unimaginable filth and were singed brown like the rest of her. She just didn’t have the capacity to care about such frivolous things anymore. 

‘What a surprise…’

She thought as she discovered more decaying bodies. 

‘Hmn…?’

Something stood out on a soiled wall just above all the sizzling corpses. There was a pattern to the blood spatters, almost too methodical to  _ be  _ blood splatters. It looked like someone painted letters out of it, but from either the heat or some other means. The message was mostly illegible.

** _PAI??RN ?? TH? BAD-_ **

** _N?T ??AIN?_ **

Toriel pondered which of these corpses was responsible for this… and why. But then came an actual surprise that earned a modest gasp from her.

“Mister  _ Mordegrid…”  _

She recognized the human immediately; he was the only one who stood out from all the others with his green jacket unbuttoned and revealing his blue shirt and gold badge. He was the one who told her all the horrible things about Brainz, how it was his responsibility to stop him and that all these soldiers were here to help him do so… Brainz was just  _ that  _ dangerous. But, Toriel did not feel the same aura from him as she did with Pailurn who was far friendlier to her than Mordegrid was. Of the two she once sought to talk this through with, it was the police lieutenant she wanted to talk to the most. 

He was dead… Big round holes burst out from his chest and armor, brownish blood stuck to his face. All he would serve to do now was to further instill Toriel with unsureness. He was only the body in the room that didn’t have blue sticking out of him. Maybe Brainz did it… But, if he did… he probably did not want to do it. In fact, he probably didn’t want  _ any  _ of this to happen. What did she  _ really  _ know about him? What did she really know about  _ anyone _ ? Everyone was lying… Even she was. The matriarch of the underground wasn’t dead: She was just hiding from the problems and letting everyone else perish from them.  ** _Everybody lies. _ **

There was nothing else here for Toriel. It was time to leave. She got up despite feeling a heavier burden on herself, and was more than willing to get out of this place. But lo and behold… the opposite entrance to the lab. Toriel didn’t notice when she first entered but  _ that _ way still had a door and it was  _ closed.  _ The door itself was glowing bright red and a further inspection revealed it was bulging inside, with streams of magma leaking in all around it. 

‘Well then! At least  _ something  _ is still working.’

As impressive as that was, it meant she wasn’t going  _ that  _ way. Now what? From what she could remember, even in all this duress, if she was in the ‘Lab’, there should be an elevator nearby. It would have been just to her left if she was facing the lab, and… that metal she saw melting and warping in the lava was most likely what currently  _ remained  _ of the elevator. 

Toriel looked out the way she came in, the elevator was wilted to the point it looked like it was trying to form a figure eight… She couldn’t even see the door underneath the molten rock. Just like the elevator, it was almost completely melted. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, with the power being gone. 

“Brilliant.”

She scowled out loud. 

“What am I going to do now _ ?” _

Toriel leaned against the doorway, exposed to the hellish conditions outside: it was better than being inside. 

“ _ Think,  _ Tori,  _ think…”  _

All she could really think of was how her robe had passed the point of no return. She hadn’t noticed how much of it had burned away on her, or how a good portion of her charred fur had turned brown. It just made her sadder, if that was even possible. She liked this robe… It was one of her few extant things from the ‘good days’, and was just comfortable. But it would join everything else around here and be gone soon enough. (At least the pocket was still intact. She gripped the piece of stone inside very tightly for a moment.)

The next tremor interrupted her thinking: Toriel found herself crouching against the doorframe to stay balanced. The thin crust of rock below shattered and let forth magma once more. It was a lot less harrowing to witness when she wasn’t down there too. Not so much was the flaming debris coming from the ceiling behind her, and the loud and unbelievably stressed metal groaning. Some of the floor tiles cracked and giant bumps started to come up from the ground; the strict metal walls of the building did not like the movement and some even  _ popped  _ from their installment. The door behind her that was holding out the best it could, creaked and slightly crumbled in its frame, lava started to flow in faster. 

“Oh great.  _ Great!”  _

Well now she  _ had  _ to leave the room before  _ it  _ flooded with lava, but no,  _ wait!  _ There was more! The new ‘Loudest sound she ever heard’ boomed from  _ far  _ above. The echo sounded like a gigantic cymbal being struck with titanic force. It made her want to clutch her ears. There was no wondering what the hell made that sound, because she saw it breaking through the cloud of steam above: a chunk of stone the size of a house was about to crash right into the ground before Toriel. She had two seconds to scream and back right into the foul smelling building before the brobdingnagian piece of debris crashed into the ground like a meteor.

The ground outside the lab was obliterated, the impact sending out a shockwave that shot Toriel up into the air like a lotto ball. The sound it made was even louder than the explosion that started this: the front part of the lab was a cardboard box being stepped on, the walls all bowed from the surge in stress and gave up on most of the ceiling. Toriel landed on the floor with a hard  _ - _ ** _SMACK- _ ** and barely had the time to turn over to see twenty tons of metal debris careening for her. She had no chance to avoid it and didn’t even try to. 

The sound of the ceiling crashing and clattering to the ground would be the last thing Toriel would ever hear, if it hadn’t been overshadowed itself…

** _*FWOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!* _ **

A jet of blue flames nearly ten meters high suddenly flared up with incredible volume and glow. Everything directly above Toriel was instantly vaporized. As the rest of the debris settled with all kinds of processions of clattering, the enormous torch coming from her weakened and died out. Toriel was left inside a small radius untouched by collapse as molten ash fell down above her. Even though she was quite alive, Toriel felt like she was dead as her little fireworks display had sapped her dry. Even when she finally got up from the floor, she didn’t feel capable of standing: but she was prodded by environmental degradation once more to hurry up.

The lab was as good as gone, whatever was still left was slowly bowing down and sinking into the lava below. The intact chunk behind Toriel with its door standing against the magma, the liquid death was easily flowing in all around it as the frame had deformed so much. She had to get out, she had to  _ move,  _ but  _ where?  _ There was nowhere left to go! She couldn’t  _ think-  _

‘ _ Wait.’  _

In the heat of the situation, a thought suddenly occurred to her: there was another option that was available from the get go. It had just been so long… Toriel turned to the wall with the open doorway and made for it with damning resolve. She was so  _ weak _ though, her movement was delayed and clumsy and her vision was doubled and blurring the twins of everything she saw: the lab continued to tremble and tilt towards the magma which only made the disorientation worse. Toriel clambered and crawled through the debris with everything she had left in her, closer and closer to the door. She got to the point she could see inside… and how it was completely blocked by a heaping pile of bookshelves. 

It’s a good thing she wasn’t  _ going  _ for that doorway… 

She had every intention to go to that space just  _ right  _ of it. The entire building lurched down and jostled everything inside, the resting incline now a slide for all the debris to cascade into the belly of Hotland. Toriel struggled to keep going. She could see what she was looking for though, a cut panel of the wall far more deformed and bowing than the rest because it wasn’t the same material, and it  _ wasn’t  _ a wall-

Toriel got up to it and only a light push on the stressed panel caused it to pop off.

-it was a  _ decoy.  _

She barely fit through the hole and fit even less into the tiny space behind it, the lab shifted again and Toriel could see glowing hot liquid starting to run through the floor outside. The moans and groans of ailing steel were like a discoordinate choir holding different notes. The claustrophobic space behind the wall had ended as soon as she stepped inside. 

‘Where  _ is  _ it?’ 

She felt around blindly, still too weak to light up a flame. Toriel fell back down to her knees and searched around the entire floor space until her claws wrapped around a tiny lever at the bottom of one of the walls.

‘There it is!’

She pulled it right away and heard a sharp  ** _*click!* _ ** Toriel then grabbed a small protrusion just above the lever and the wall lifted up like a shutter. 

At this point, the lava was flowing down the tilted floor like a waterslide: it illuminated the space Toriel was in, just letting her make out the stencil on the door she revealed.

** _HOTLAND MAINTENANCE ACCESS 01. ROYAL PERSONNEL ONLY_ **

She immediately went for the valve attached to the reinforced bulkhead door, but it refused to move even the slightest. The deforming structure must have gotten it  _ stuck.  _ Toriel strained and grunted with effort trying to turn the damn thing as the lab itself entered its final plunge: the foundations were giving away just meters from her. 

‘Come on.  _ Come on. Come. On….’  _

An alarmingly loud  ** _*CREEAAK!* _ ** came from the outside, it sounded like the other door was also giving in. Toriel could see lava over her shoulder blasting into the room: The giant bumps in the floor all cracked open and turned into abysses. The structure was seconds away from completely decomposing. 

“ _ Come on!!! PLEASE!”  _

** _*KLUNK!* _ **

The metal wheel suddenly jerked a quarter way to the left and the whole door seemed to shift in its frame. Toriel gasped panickedly and had little trouble spinning the wheel the rest of the way until she was able to throw the door open. She crouched herself to a space with even less clearance and shut the door with a thunderous slam but not before catching a glimpse of a tidal wave made of hot swallowing everything outside. She felt the heat immediately through the door as she was resealing it. Toriel backed away from it and slid down against a wall.

It was dark now… and also quiet. There was nothing but the muffled sound of rumbling behind the reinforced door: She knew it would keep everything out, at least for a while… 

Toriel had her moment to recuperate and collect her thoughts. She narrowly escaped death yet again, which was starting to lose its impact on her. Honestly, what she was more upset about was the fact she yelled at the door. It wasn’t like her to raise her voice like that even when scared. She mustn't let this all get to her. 

She tried to make her light so she could see again but unsurprisingly, she couldn’t even manage a spark. Toriel sighed after the last attempt.

‘I should have brought  _ provisions  _ with me- I just did not think it was going to be this  _ bad…’  _

Shame on her, this is what she got. Exhausted as all hell and in great need of something to eat, help her regain some of her strength. Again, she couldn’t help but think of what Brainz had to go through: what did  _ he  _ have to eat? He didn’t touch the pie she gave him but was he hungry the entire time? 

She was hungry, tired, and sad, now, but she  _ had  _ to press on. 

It took a hell of a lot of focus to emit a flame that would look puny on a candle. It actually hurt her to sustain it and she felt her whole arm getting sore, but it would have to do. So where was she, exactly?

  
  


What Toriel remembered in the lab that doesn’t exist anymore was that Hotland was built with a system of unseen tunnels and shafts to assist in upkeeping and providing a secondary way of access if the main paths failed. There were a whole bunch of access points to this place scattered all throughout Hotland, Toriel just remembered  _ this  _ one, though…

She also remembered just how claustrophobic and uninviting this secret world was. It was too small for someone of her stature, she’d have to hunch over when she stood up and her horns commonly scraped against the concrete ceiling. Now there should have been a staircase going up in lieu of the public elevators. She  _ did  _ find the beginning on such an assent but not without noticing a larger room just behind the stairs. 

Toriel gave herself the brief minute to explore it because it really struck her as something she didn’t recall at all. The feeling only increased as she made out what looked like a sort of hideaway. It was still a fairly small space, about half the size of her bedroom. It had desks with all sorts of papers with illegible writing, weird looking metal scraps, computers, all sorts of sciency looking stuff that looked like they hadn’t been disturbed for a very long time. 

Who did this all belong to? She felt like she was supposed to know, but couldn’t think of anyone. She was so strangely drawn by all this, that she even huddled up to the desk and tried to find something to give her an answer. Of course she didn’t get one, but what she did get was enough of a surprise that she lurched up and hit her head on the ceiling. 

One of the presumably powerless computer monitors reacted to her presence and lit up. Its screen bathed the room in a dingy green glow. 

🕈☜☹☹📪 ✋❄🕯💧 ☝⚐⚐👎 ❄⚐ 💧☜☜ ✡⚐🕆 ⚐🕆❄ ✌☠👎 ✌👌⚐🕆❄... 

✋🕯💣 ✌☞☼✌✋👎 ✡⚐🕆🕯☼☜ ✌ ☹✋❄❄☹☜ ☹✌❄☜📪 💣✡ ✈🕆☜☜☠🖳 ✡⚐🕆 ✌☼☜ ☠⚐❄ ☝⚐✋☠☝ ❄⚐ ☹✋😐☜ 🕈☟✌❄ ✡⚐🕆 ☞✋☠👎.

It was just a bunch of garbled up nonsense, Toriel was more affixed on the fact there was still power here… But this really wasn’t relevant or helpful to her and Toriel’s minute to examine the room was up. She headed for the stairs as the glow went dark.

Climbing the stairs was not a very fun experience, being she had to be bent over and she felt the exhaustion turning into pain all over her. There were a good amount of ways to go after the first landing, but Toriel figured she wanted to get up to higher ground before risking going back outside. This meant she had a lot of stairs to climb and nothing but her thoughts to keep herself occupied. 

Well, while she was thankful for the sealed door keeping the lava out, Toriel unburied the same question she had a long time ago.

‘Why was this place hidden and locked away from everyone?’

  
  


OK, bit of a dumb or rhetorical question. This was kept off limits because it was  _ dangerous!  _ A monster could get lost real easily here and end up in some undesired place. But Toriel recalled an idea she had well over twenty years ago, perfectly. Whenever they were truly finished building this place: why don’t they turn these cramped maintenance tunnels into conditioned tunnels? 

Every monster had their preferences: some really did not care for the cold, as others could not stand the heat radiating from Hotland, but if they wished to venture to the castle, they would have no choice but to embrace the heat. This project would be the alternative that wouldn’t force any monster who wanted to speak to her or the old king to be put through discomfort. Sure, it would be a time and labor intensive thing to do, and sure this would benefit only a few of the denizens who had this problem, but every monster mattered back then. 

Toriel wasn’t surprised that her idea was never brought to life, it wasn’t like her policies were considered anymore and it  _ really  _ wasn’t like it mattered anyway: not now at least. 

This ascent was  _ horrible,  _ though: it was dark and cramped and really stuffy. Toriel’s memory wasn’t going to be any help here when it came to direction, she just told herself to keep climbing up while ignoring all the hallways branching out from each landing. Just when she thought she would go mad from all this, the ceiling stopped going up and Toriel ran out of stairs to climb: she was at the top… and was given a new premonition for what she accomplished. 

The exit was was red rung ladder going up to a large hatch in the ceiling, an  _ open  _ hatch. Any semblance of safety that Toriel gave herself was now gone: somebody else knew about this place, and that somebody could’ve been lurking around those dark halls and unlit stairwells. Her sense was replaced by an urgent need to get out, but wait… It wasn’t much better outside of the hatch. 

Steam; and here she thought she’d seen enough of it from the bottom of Hotland, but here she was directly above the source of all the steam. Heat wasn’t the only thing that rises, and with nowhere to escape? This is where all the steam went and this is where all the steam was. Naturally it felt even worse up here than it did walking on freaking lava. There was no seeing anything, it was so dense and suffocating that Toriel may as may have been trying to swim in boiling water itself. She wandered, drenched in burning and clumsy agony for at least a minute before she decided she was too hard on the scary dark space she crawled out of. Toriel spent an additional agonizing minute trying to find her way back. One of her feet found the hole in the floor, it let the rest of her fall into it: getting banged up on the way down. 

She gave in to the urge to cry again, without making an effort to get up from the crumpled mess she was on the floor. 

“I can not  _ take  _ this anymore. I just-.”

She devolved to whimpers and ugly sounding sobs. Words were hard to come by, Toriel became unwell from the emotional collapse. 

“I am  _ so  _ sorry, Brainz… I never meant to put you through this  _ TORMENT!  _ (God) Why have you forsaken everybody? Why. Why.  _ Why?”  _

  
  
  


Toriel decided to take her chances in the dark spaces when she got back to her feet with even less hope to keep her going. Her entire body ached and shivered wildly, the tears wouldn’t stop rolling down her face. As she sunk back into the concrete labyrinth, Toriel sang to herself… more of a murmur, but it was a song she knew by heart. 

“Come. M-my, child… S-s- _ stay.  _ With… me…-”

  
[A somber Lullaby ](https://soundcloud.com/user-37215732/lullabysad)   
  


She started one of the linear passages and took a quivering breath before continuing her sweet hymn, the outstretched hand and love for her long gone children. One of the last things she could grasp for hope as her grip weakened. 

  
The world began to tremble, cracks formed all around the soulless corridor of concrete. Toriel’s sobs overpowered her song as she waited for the shaking to stop… or for death to come. She was able to resume when the tremors subsided again, resume limping and half whispering to herself. There was nothing left in her heart, except hurt… she sang out of hurt and woe. Hurt was all she knew now, it was all she had ever gotten after it all fell down…    
  


By the time her song had run its course: Toriel had turned back from three dead ends, two open holes looking down at the hell below, down more stairs and up an equal amount. Her verses saw her all the way to another hatch on the other side of Hotland. She had been soaked from her exposure to steam, but could feel the tears continuing to run down her face. 

Fortunately,  _ this time,  _ the hatch was closed, but that also hid whatever lay in wait for her above it. At this point, Toriel really didn’t know what to expect nor did she care for anything anymore. She stopped audibly crying and turned the big valve in the ceiling until the hatch came loose. A cautious push and the thing slowly creaked open to a world of darkness. 

Toriel couldn’t see anything, she couldn’t see  _ STEAM,  _ and that was enough to have her climb out once more. It was still uncomfortably hot out here, but nowhere near as wet and agonizing as west Hotland was. It was so  _ quiet,  _ too: it was almost like she was in a completely different place. From what her dim light illuminated, Toriel was on a small platform made of rock that was cut off from every side. There was another section of floor just a meter or two across one side. From the looks of it, there was supposed to be a bridge here connecting it to her spot and she didn’t have to think very hard as to why it was missing. 

She should have been at the eastmost point of level three; that was where the hidden tunnels should have reached, but Toriel was in no mood and had no intention of going back down and finding another way. With how much she walked, she had to have been close enough. Of course, she wasn’t going to get any closer unless she jumped across that gap. 

(Of  _ course  _ she looked over the edge and of course she took a good long look at what would happen if she fell as hellfire burned far below.) 

Despite the weakness and disorientation, Toriel surprisingly didn’t trip. She found herself standing on top of strange tiles or something similar. The entire path was covered in them and they were all different shades of gray and black. When she tread, some of the tiles sank slightly and emitted a clicking sound… nothing would occur though. She felt that something would if there was still power coming through here, however.

When the tiles ended, there was a set of rising stairs for her to climb up: a large streak of blood spanned the entire flight, following right down to the mangled body that greeted Toriel at the bottom alongside some sparse debris. 

She made it to the top and… there was debris everywhere. This was supposed to be a four way intersection from the looks of it, but two of the ways were completely blocked by rubble.The ground was covered in dust and blood. The only way to go was straight ahead and up some more stairs laden with more small chunks of rocks and bricks. Toriel was almost certain the Hotland Common building would be at the top. She was too wise at this point to feel joy or any kind of solace over the fact. What being there meant was: she was very close to New Home… what used to be her home, but it also meant going through the most densely populated dwelling in the Underground which she was certain would contain more dust than she had ever seen. She really didn’t have high hopes or expectations for what she’d see, and what she actually saw… there was no comparing it. 

  
  
  


[Everything is gone...](https://youtu.be/3bMGEEqF3qw)

  
  


Toriel expected to see a building with black windows hiding grisley sights behind them, she expected homes only occupied by the dead. She certainly  _ didn’t  _ expect to find that the entire place had collapsed. 

The sick feeling hit her like a bullet to the gut, she felt her heart dropping to the floor. Everything was gone, there was nothing left. Toriel absently trudged towards this smoking and formless pile of rubble, this place which once had an identity and was now nothing more than destroyed building materials covered in dust. More small bits of debris toppled down from above as she disturbed the resting place of many innocent monsters. As Toriel advanced into this caved in chamber, anything she felt was white noise: anything was drowned out. 

The scant sections of floor that still peeked through the holes in the rubble turned into reddish, yellowish tiles. There was a fine layer of simmering blood underneath everything, the sensation would’ve been hellacious if Toriel could feel anything. 

When the commons first appeared in her thoughts, Toriel had one given and frankly selfish concern that she carried with her: Of all the things to be touched by the devastation, a fountain placed in the lobby was what she internally begged to be OK. She expected it to find laying in ruin as a victim of vandalism just like his statue was, but the thoughts were redundant now. There was no questioning it, it had been completely crushed by the collapse. Gone… just like everything else. The realization of this was just the last straw to break before Toriel felt like her life should’ve just ended. She felt powerless to the hopelessness settling on her as well as the complete and utter numbness that started to take over her form.

Her vision started to blur and staying up became progressively harder, yet as she was sinking down, something caught her gaze through her fading sight. Something that stood out from the overall mess. 

There was a piece of wall that still partially stood, it looked like it had been untouched by everything that occurred. The surface sported a message of crude creation, painted in a shade of dark and runny red. The way it stood out and existed was as if it wanted to defy everything and everyone who dared to destroy it. Never had anything had such a profound effect on her, at least not for a long time….

Well, except for the person who  _ wrote  _ it.

** _BRAINZ WASN’T HERE…_ **

  
  



	7. UNDEFINED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 09:49:32  
09:49:31  
09:49:30  
...

Her eyes widened and the numbness departed from her, the message had done away with the burden of her despair.

“He. Still  _ lives.” _ _   
  
_

Never had Brainz’s blatant lie been so uplifting, telling Toriel nearly everything she had once begged to know: despite everything, Brainz was still alive and had made it this far too. This feeling, it was  _ relief  _ she felt and nothing terrible had occurred because of it. Even so, Toriel almost felt a trifle ‘silly’: of  _ course  _ Brainz was fine, he was one tough cookie. Though, Toriel couldn’t help but wonder why Brainz denoted his presence like this. Who was it for? 

While it may have saved her life, Toriel had nothing but doubts that it was intended for  _ her  _ of all people. Brainz would not be so tempted to want to be of any assistance to her, so who was it supposed to inform then? Brainz did not have any allies or friends. Toriel realized she was overthinking this gift to her: knowing that Brainz still persisted in this nightmare gave her the strength to get to her feet and move. It gave her  _ more  _ than that, this sensation she couldn’t fully describe was like a blanket covering her. 

_ Hope.  _

  
  


Through the disintegrating rock and twisted metal she clambered over, Brainz’s message watched over her as the unobstructed portal to the next area waited for her in the back of the ruins.

Toriel’s feet touched blood soaked tile once again as she departed from the rubble. She gave the uplifting message one final glance as if to thank it for keeping her going and then she gazed down the path to go. 

Darkness… A narrow bridge lightly peppered with dust lead straight into a corridor submerged in dark and foreboding. Ashes, still glowing with heat fluttered down from above as a very distant explosion shook the entire world. 

She stepped carefully towards the awaiting maw of the CORE. Toriel was given a  _ chance  _ for once, one solitary chance to mend everything and save what little they all had left. She had no familiarity, she had no plan, she had no assurance that she would even be the slightest bit successful at  _ anything  _ just as she had failed so many times in the past, but she had made it this far and she had all the motivation and drive to travel three times as far the distance she made. She made her first step into the confines of the CORE- it  _ took  _ her…

  
  


* * *

* * *

* * *

  
  


** _THis is _ ** **Nine, ** ** _NINE! _ ** **TEN! Fif-TEEN. Ignore the SIRENS. TWELVE! Follow the evacuation route. Fucking SIX!! **

**“Any station, This is Papa-Whiskey three. My squad. Was hit. They’re uhhh… It’s just me now. I’m pretty messed up, I think my leg is… there’s a lot of blood. I don’t know.” **

**“It’s MONSTER HUNTING SEASON.”**

**“It wasn’t supposed to go DOWN like this!” **

** _Brainz reared himself for a third kick, but just before the business end of his boot would strike the door: its hinges gave out and sent it face first into the floor with a thunderous slam._ **

** _“Oops.”_ **

** _"wiFF DEEP TEM HISTORI"_ **

**“** ** _What kinda fuckin moron thought it’d be a good idea to mix monsters with people? ‘Ebotts wake’ More like WAKE ME UP ALREADY!-”_ **

** _“- THIS??? MY fault? Really?? MY FAULT???-”_ **

** _Then they pointed at her, oh god there were so many everywhere. _ **

** _“- it’s YOUR FAULT!!! You fucking started this!!!-”_ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU._ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU._ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU._ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU._ **

** _I just want to be with my wife and child again…._ **

** _Please. _ **

** _I DON’T HAVE A FAMILY._ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU._ **

** _I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU.I TRUSTED YOU._ **

  
  


“FORGIVE ME!” 

Toriel cried out, the anguish stabbed her very being with its cold and merciless presence. She could’ve screamed into fifty different occasions and it wouldn’t be enough. A thousand people demanded penance from her, but she couldn’t  _ SEE  _ or  _ HEAR  _ them. They were just  _ there  _ over fifty thousand times and hated that she was too. 

It was funny as hell, it was hilariously funny. The kind of funny that made your ears want to commit suicide and for your existence to stop yesterday. When the weight of flaccid actuality exceeded the acceptable bounds, the sequence was not to be sustained. 

  
  
  


An unassuming voice screamed at her from twenty places. 

**ΣMΣЯGΣПᄃY, ᄃӨПƬΛIПMΣПƬ ƧYƧƬΣM FΛIᄂЦЯΣ.**

**DIMΣПƧIӨПΛᄂ ƧIПGЦᄂΛЯIƬY DΣƬΣᄃƬΣD.**

!!!!!𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐘, 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌 𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐔𝐑𝐄.

𝐃𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐃𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃!!!!!!

16ERR2094

*2#$$^';[]@#QAaaaAaaaaaa[090--=)(9$

666666666666

66666

⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥ ⑥⑥ ⑥⑥ ⑥⑥⑥⑥⑥

* * *

> ** _“SIX, IT’S GODDAMN FUCKING *SIX!!!*”_ **

JUMP TO 00122777256000111UNDF2344AU2234

  
  
  


“-I SAID, ‘ **WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO NOW, ** ** _SIR!!’?” _ **

Toriel was surrounded by the troopers, they all glared knives into her but their weapons refused to face her. Cohesion only allowed her to look down and see she was now wearing the same camouflage they were, except with colorful bands and various medals. 

Somewhere, someone screamed: laden with panic and exhaustion. 

“ ** _SHE’S COMING!!! _ ** ** _RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!” _ **

The terror in the room of Delta Runes became universal, they all  _ screamed.  _ The screams wouldn’t stop, not even as the wall of searing heat absorbed everything. The screams, the  _ screams  _ were there to last. The floors, the walls, the ceilings all screamed their nonexistent lungs out with the simulated tone of-

DΛПGΣЯ!!

DΛПGΣЯ!!

DΛПGΣЯ!!

DΛПGΣЯ!!

ᄃΛƬΛƧƬЯӨPΉIᄃ FΛIᄂЦЯΣ!!!!

_**CATASTTRToPHIIC **_

_ **FAIL** _

_ **UU rRWE** _

_ **REREEE** _

The corridor was awash with red. She basked in the red glow of hell, fleeting and fading as the strobe lights sped past her emitting their terrifying screech into the dead of a cold winter’s night. 

**UDF UDN DDDHHHHhhh**

** _[10-10 Investigate a disturbance in Ebott Valley._ **

** _10-4 Dispatch. Verify Location?_ **

** _That’s Ebott Valley, Exit Ramp 201_ **

  
  


** _ Shots fired from the ground! Assault in progress. Repeat! An Assault in progress! _ **

** _11-99! _ **

** _11-99!_ **

** _Requesting additional Units! Multiple Officers down! _ **

** _It’s a fucking WARZONE down here.!]_ **

  
  


** _“_ ** **COME ON, YOU ** ** _BASTARDS. _ ** **I’LL SEND YOU ** ** _ALL _ ** **TO FUCKING HELL!**

It wasn’t a surprise all the commotion disturbed the baby, she started her wailing behind the insufficient doors. 

“Hit the  _ floor!” _

Pailurn hadn’t given Toriel a second to notice him after his shout, did he tackle her to the ground. Hellfire obliterated everything inches above their heads. There was a brilliant light consuming all and then there was everything possible to be crammed into a scant amount of unaware nothingness. 

Of course she looked around but  _ no,  _ he wasn’t there or anywhere. He never was and never would be just as everything else couldn’t have been. She’d seen it ** _ ∞ _ ** number of times. The number of cases of which it could’ve happened by slightly different was beyond the higher ranges of absolute ∞ but also entering the depths of 0. Everything  _ WAS  _ and everything  _ WASN’T  _ when you put it like that, it really made for a hell of a time. 

ᗡƎ⊥ƆƎ⊥Ǝᗡ ⅄⊥Iᴚ∀˥∩⅁NIS SS∀W

ᴍᴀꜱꜱ ꜱɪɴɢᴜʟᴀʀɪᴛʏ ᴅᴇᴛᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ

  
AAAAAAA a A A A AA  
  


a

In a glimpse of yesterday’s universe, the corridor would have burst open like a banana peel stretching indefinitely into every direction feasible and infeasible. But this wasn’t one case, it was all of them and in an equal number of insurmountable realities did this  _ not  _ occur but they would have to jostle eventually and determine what really occurred. 

<strike> Toriel Ran for her life </strike>

<strike> Toriel huddled down and braced for the incoming death. </strike>

<strike> She tried to leap over the pit of spitting plasma into arcs of twelve million volt death. </strike>

<strike> She finally got herself unstuck from the knot in the ventilation shaft and continued to crawl. </strike>

V

  
  


** _We anticipate a fifty mile zone in terms of ‘Affected Area’ with the closest five being a complete and utter loss. The residual temperature alone is still too high for rescue teams to even step INTO. _ **

** _ꜱᴜꜱᴘᴇᴄᴛ ᴏᴍᴇɢᴀ-2 ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀꜱ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴀ ʙɪᴘᴇᴅᴀʟ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴍᴇᴀꜱᴜʀɪɴɢ ᴀᴛ ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴛᴏ ᴇɪɢʜᴛ ꜰᴇᴇᴛ ᴛᴀʟʟ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜᴏʀɴꜱ ᴀᴛᴏᴘ ᴏꜰ ɪᴛꜱ ʜᴇᴀᴅ, ᴄᴏᴠᴇʀᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴘʀɪᴍᴀʀɪʟʏ ᴡʜɪᴛᴇ ꜰᴜʀ. _ **

** _ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇᴀʙᴏᴜᴛꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴜɴᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ʙᴜᴛ ꜱᴜꜱᴘᴇᴄᴛ ᴏᴍᴇɢᴀ-2 ɪꜱ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴄᴏɴꜱɪᴅᴇʀᴇᴅ ʜᴏꜱᴛɪʟᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴀɴɢᴇʀᴏᴜꜱ._ **

** _ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴇᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴍᴀᴛᴄʜɪɴɢ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇɴɢᴀɢᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴀʟʟ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟᴏᴄᴀʟ ᴇᴍᴇʀɢᴇɴᴄʏ ʟɪɴᴇ ɪᴍᴍᴇᴅɪᴀᴛᴇʟʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʀᴇᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴏꜱᴇꜱᴛ ᴍɪʟɪᴛᴀʀʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴇɴᴛᴇʀ._ **

  
  


“Well this is new for me, I must admit I am not familiar with gaining my own personal notoriety.” 

“Ahk, dun worry about it, you’ll get used to it eventually.”

* * *

  
  
**CODE-313 **   
  


DELTA-RED C230 

EMBER 10

//(Toriel is supposed to experience existing in every possible dimension simultaneously)//

//(Unable to think, as the memories and experiences of infinity possible scenarios fight to exist in her mind before vanishing with the fleeting dimension)//

//OUTLINE

3-7

  1. Toriel Steps into Core
    1. No Transition or logical description, go berserk with context lacking scenes and merge them all together
    2. Intermittent with chopped bits of dialogue and past/future events that may not even pertain to her
    3. Enrich with occasional nonsensical error messages denoting dimensional convergence. 
  2. The timelines begin to show some substance and segregation.
    1. Slow down with the rushed nonsense
    2. Start introducing stability into the scenarios.
      1. Do NOT mention what’s his face
      2. Do NOT try to throw off readers with red herrings
      3. Do NOT make a 4th wall joke.//

  
  
  


EEEEEEE\\\\\\\:}\l

  
  


** _Just DOn’t tell the PTA, but they already know: you’re fucked._ **

  
  


“How do I leave the RUINS? I wanna go home.”

“Ｗｈａｔ？

Ｔｈｉｓ ＩＳ ｙｏｕｒ ｈｏｍｅ．”

  
  
  


I never  _ said  _ that! 

_ Sure you did, I got proof. _

  
  


_ 𝙾𝚑 𝙵𝚄𝙲𝙺 𝚖𝚎!  _

_ 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙺𝙸𝙻𝙻 𝙷𝙴𝚁! 𝙾𝚑 𝚐𝚘𝚍... _

_ 𝙾𝚑 𝚐𝚘𝚍, 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚎? _

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


✋︎ 🙵■︎□︎⬥︎ ⬥︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♎︎♓︎♎︎📪︎ ❒︎♋︎⧫︎❒︎□︎●︎♏︎♓︎■︎⌘︎⧫︎

⬧︎□︎ ⧫︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ⬥︎♒︎⍓︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♍︎♋︎❍︎♏︎ ♒︎♏︎❒︎♏︎📬︎

  
  


i get the feeling you aren’t going to learn anything from this.

i hate to do this to you, my ‘queen’, but i guess i gotta judge you now…

you’re a terrible person.

The air felt one hundred times heavier, but his gaze could strangle them alone. He leaned forward into the uncomfortable yellow glow of the dirty lamp.

“$15,000-.”

He said after an eternity. 

“-Five of it upfront to cover equipment and ‘naysayers’.” 

  
  


** _No…_ **

“Before you say ‘It’s too much.’ That covers the lack of questions and the urgency… now you said you wanted C̵̠̼͇̣͖̈́̃̈h̸̨̛̰͙͖̳̜̃̓ǎ̸̧͖͈̱͖͈̺r̷͚̫̆͐̐̈́̈́̈́̿̋̔̕a̴͚͈̫̫͖̍͐̾ back? Or that they never existed?”

_ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇʟʟ ɪꜱ ꜰʀɪꜱᴋ?  _

_ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇʟʟ ɪꜱ ꜱᴀɴꜱ? _

_ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇʟʟ ɪꜱ _

** _Ǵ̶̲̯̮̐̓̆͆4̵̧̰͔͉͉̤̦̜̔͑͐̊̆̓͋̐̌$̷̣̰͇̹͇̃͆͛t̵̠̬̉̈́͛̾͆͊̆͒͌͊3̶̛̞͚̙̳́͛̄͋̆͊R̶̢̘̘̝̳̗̲͇͉̅̾̊̈́̽͝ͅ_ **

  
  


_ Don’t lie to me, I *know* you got history with these people. I saw the dogtags and you seem all too happy to ＦＯＲＧＥＴ something.  _

  
  
  


**J u s t f o r g e t a b o u t me . . . E v e r y b o d y e l s e a l r e a d y h a s . . . **

  
  
  


She had the most peculiar sense of Déjà vu, the voice sounded oddly familiar. Toriel was suddenly removed from the mess of conflicting existences, grounded to her own self by this deep sadness she felt inside. It was to be with her forever, proving her own objective reality by the pain in her heart. The moment she returned to being self aware and singular… was the moment she realized there was no saving the CORE… but it wasn’t even that anymore. What used to be it was now impossible to describe, impregnable to the notions of any mortal comprehension. It was like staring into absolute nothingness but an illusion of such as it could only be made from the undoing of the universe itself. 

It was involuntary that she tried to perceive what she saw, she couldn’t help what she felt. But never had she felt a pain so exquisite from gazing into it. Every sensation she could ever feel were firing on full blast at the same time.

** _Fear, Awe, Joy, Depression, Anger, Spitefulness, Jealousy, Resentment, Disgust, Relief, Irritation, Indignation, Pity, Anticipation… _ ** It went on. 

She couldn’t stare into the abyss, it stared into  _ her  _ and soon there would be nothing left but a heap of madness where she once stood. Toriel could bear the torment no longer, she refused to take in the chaos and forced all her senses to do the same. With her eyes tightly closed and mind internally screaming to keep everything out, Toriel ran ‘pell mell’ into the infinity of decay.

It was like being hindered by the clutches of a night terror, nothing went as you so desperately wanted. She felt like she was wading through water, she felt her limbs moving so  _ slow.  _ But the sensations all around her felt like she was going faster than she had ever ran before. Her sides felt like she was running backwards, her face felt the wind hitting her from the side. Everything was  _ wrong,  _ everything was  ** _broken: good GOD it didn’t make any sense! _ ** But she just kept running with her eyes closed, just hoping that a miracle would see her return to the real world. 

If this was what was developing in this area, how the  _ hell  _ would Brainz be able to get through this?! Could  _ ANYTHING  _ get through this?? It seemed like everything outside of this was trivial in comparison, as if it  _ COULD  _ be compared.

She just kept running and running, it was all she could  _ do,  _ until she suddenly collided with something soft and small, feeling it up to her exposed knees. Toriel actually tripped over this… thing, yet she felt it toppling over too as she was sent face first into a cold metal floor… What happened next forced her to open her eyes despite everything. 

“Ow! That hurt! Mommy, are you okay?” 

A voice she had  ** _never _ ** heard in her life squeaked from behind her, she almost screamed on the spot from the shock. She spun around from her huddled up self, ready to take in another gaze into oblivion and… 

A set of sleek metal doors encapsulated her in a small similarly textured room…  ** _There was nobody else there… _ **

Toriel’s descent into violent tearing was delayed by the moment of utter bewilderment, she couldn’t even remember what had just happened: only that it made her burst into tears as she felt the floor from beneath her rise ever so slowly. A small bell chimed every few moments from above. Her breakdown had to stop when the doors suddenly opened on their own volition, the floor stopped rising and Toriel realized where she was. 

It may have taken her minutes… hours… days even, to get through the CORE, but as the elevator let her out, Toriel made her first step into New Home after twenty years running away from home. 

The elevator doors slid shut behind her and she was suddenly inflicted with this terrible shiver that passed through every fiber of her being. She turned around and only reentered that state of anxiety and confusion she felt before. 

The lights that were  _ just  _ blinking and flashing on the metal frame had gone out, they were all surrounded by scorch marks from when they burst. The frame had deformed and caved in as rubble completely obstructed it and every foreseeable inch from inside the shaft. The elevator hadn’t been working for a  _ long  _ time… 

“But… h-how?.

No…” 

Toriel didn’t even try anymore passed that comment, she was done with it the moment she saw it. At this point, she was completely  _ shot.  _ Toriel was but a faint shadow of her old self, brought to this point within such a short period of time. She was tired to the bone and fed up to twenty miles above her head. The tattering and marring to her form and clothing made it look like she strolled through four rings of hell itself but she felt like she crawled through nine… 

  
  


The despondent queen of now  _ nothing _ slowly and silently returned to her travels, stepping over the rubble and overgrowth that once was her life. At her wit’s end and nearly the underground’s end, Toriel couldn’t even feel fear over what could possibly wait to spring out at her anymore. She felt like all of her emotions had been burned to husks. 

Something made her feel like the CORE was a lost cause, and she didn’t argue with it, and the space to find Brainz was running out. If he wasn’t somewhere ahead, then he was long gone and all this torment was for nothing…

It was fine though, Toriel knew she deserved it. She turned out of one soulless corridor of bricks and into the other, it was dead quiet: she almost preferred the muffled sounds of collapse she had become acclimated to. It was almost eerie, as if the world had cleared the stage just for her to walk into the center of it, just to give everyone a perfect view of what would happen to her next… 

There was blood, it glew like the lava Toriel had once walked across. Her pace became faster… the amount of blood became  _ bigger.  _ She followed the streaks closer and closer, the red was  _ everywhere.  _ It just kept spreading and spreading the more she walked, this was the most of the freakish blood she had ever seen. Toriel found that she was still capable of feeling dread, and the feeling grew stronger than ever within her. Then she found a body, basking in a pool of its own searing red. 

  
  


There was no question to it…

Toriel finally found Brainz,

He was dead. 

  
  



	8. 99999999999999999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999  
99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

[My Child...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1c6fiCcveA)

“No… oh  _ no.  _ Oh please,  _ no…”  _

She had run over to the still form in a heartbeat, desperate to feel for his own. Brainz was spread on his face, and she could dozens of holes bored into his back. There was so much of his blood… It burned Toriel worse than the magma ever could, but she didn’t care about herself. She turned him over and screamed when his head drooped behind his back, only attached by what skin his neck had left. 

There was nothing she could do, she was too late. He was dead, It looked like whoever did this to him wanted to make sure of it, he was barely staying together he was so  _ damaged…  _

“No….  _ No….”  _

In lieu of everything she had been through, all the bitterness and the numb that followed: Toriel was still capable of feeling pain. She wept silently, too weak from the pain to make anything louder than a hushed sob or a quivering whisper. 

It had happened  _ again…  _ he was gone just like the others. Only this time… it wasn’t Asgore who killed him, not even the soldiers who pulled the trigger on him: it was all her fault. 

Toriel slowly cradled Brainz’s cold body into her arms, taking great care to hold up his severed head. 

“I am sorry… I am  _ so. So. Sorry… I have forsaken you when you needed me the most, my c-ch-child… I am so sorry…”  _

The look on his face… as ghastly as the mutilation was, it was his  _ face  _ (Or what was left of it) that would haunt her forever. His one eye was closed, blood streamed from his eyelids, but the  _ red  _ one. It stared right into her, it was as if he was still looking at her, even now seeing nothing: looking into her eyes with that expression of his as if to ask ‘ _ Why?’.  _ Even being gone… he looked so  _ lost,  _ nevermore would he be more of a lost child to her. 

There was nobody around to answer for this, Brainz had been violently slain and left behind to be forgotten like a piece of trash on the side of the road. Nobody came to Toriel’s presence, no one answered for her plaintive sobs. Only a handful of yards away, the capital city lay in ruins, Toriel was all alone. Alone to sit there caressing Brainz’s remains, mourning. 

She lost track of time, she had been sitting there with him so for so long… not willing to put him down. It didn’t matter anymore and it wasn’t going to be long now. She was more than fine staying here for the rest of her life, Toriel didn’t even want to see Asgore up ahead, if he still existed. This would have been just fine for her, she couldn’t even feel the burning sensation from now being soaked in the tainted blood… But then she felt something else. A different kind of pain from the arduous feeling in her heart, a  _ stinging  _ kind of feeling hitting her from the front. 

She opened her tear soaked eyes and saw that something had changed. The blood she basked in had lost its glow, it was now no more than a shade of dark scarlet covering them both and pooling onto the ground. It was like the life had departed from the blood as well… but it wasn’t  _ gone.  _ It had simply  _ moved  _ right before her… into the tiny heart that rose from Brainz’s body. 

It was his SOUL… It was still persisting after his death.

Toriel couldn’t believe it, she had seen a human SOUL a long time ago: preserved behind glass, but this was different. It looked so much different. It was mostly  _ black,  _ it almost looked like a piece of misshapen charcoal, but it was stricken with bands and splotches of that ever so radiant red, they were so bright it was like they were about to  _ burst.  _ The SOUL itself, twitched and flickered like an image on a decaying screen.

It was mesmerizing, it radiated with power… she could  _ feel  _ it: so bitter, so  _ angry,  _ diseased. It revived every unpleasant feeling in her, she felt the hatred, how much it  _ hated…  _ Hated life, hated  _ her,  _ hated  _ itself.  _

…

She didn’t want to touch it…

She didn’t want to do it… 

The bad feelings started to subside, the SOUL was fading away. Gone forever just like  _ him…  _

She wasn’t well, she wasn’t  _ thinking. _

Toriel panicked… and grabbed it out of the air. 

* * *

  
  


** _You shouldn’t have DONE that. _ **

* * *

  
  


The SOUL suddenly vanished. The shockwave hit from her claw caused her to convulse, then came the burning. Her claw began to  _ burn _ with the most indescribable of pain, it made her entire arm tremble violently. The searing sensation began to spread, it ran up her arm: getting faster and faster as it traveled. She could see RED streaming from her claw, stretching towards her core as the burning preceded it.

“N- _ nNn-nno-.” _

The mistake was already realized, she tried to take it back. She tried to stop it. Toriel audibly struggled and vainly fought it, it reached her core and spread to every corner of her being. She twitched and spasmed uncontrollably as the burning reached the last inch of her. A black and jagged heart tattooed itself into her palm, a shadow of what she just  _ took  _ into herself. 

She could hear the slow  _ drumming  _ from all around her, it shook her with every beat, forcing everything further and further into her own SOUL, it was too late to take it back: the RED  _ bled  _ into it. She felt a sensation she had  _ never  _ before, it forced her to hunch over and she felt something inside of her chest climbing up out of her. She wretched and felt a stream of liquid  _ ‘SCORCHING’  _ fall out of her mouth, RED splashed to the ground and HISSED. It infected the world as it did  _ her,  _ everything started to darken. The walls, the floor, the ceiling: all vanished from existence as she was left in the dark. 

The dark called out to her, it  _ accosted  _ her, she could hear them all: laughing,  _ jeering,  _ ridiculing her. She found herself  _ joining  _ them, she cackled uncontrollably like someone was pulling strings on her and forcing her to howl giddily. The pulse was like thunderclaps inside of her head, the voices were so loud and the  _ screaming  _ and crying wouldn’t  _ STOP.  _ Everything amalgamated into this deafening cacophony. Just as she would go mad from the  _ chaos,  _ the EXCRUCIATING SENSATION STABBING INTO HER-

It all suddenly stopped.

* * *

  
  


[You REALLY shouldn't have done that...](https://youtu.be/JX5-aIXk0Cc)

Brainz was  _ gone,  _ Toriel was alone again, no sensations, no voices. No, wait. She could hear something. Such a faint sound, so muffled and far away, but she could still make it out as the unquestionable sound of a grizzling child. She heard it, and then she made out a light in the distance. The sickly and flickering glow of a dirty fluorescent light stuck to the ceiling outside of her cell. 

She walked into the light’s gaze and into the dingy corridor. Small prison cells closed off by tight iron bars surrounded her on every side, but not  _ hers _ . The bars weren’t there yet, she wasn’t concerned about herself. She just wanted to find the source of the crying, walking down the block, feeling nothing but the need to head to the sound. 

She had walked forever and passed millions of darkened cells, unable to see what they all contained. Just as anybody would turn back, the crying sound always grew closer and she could ‘feel’ suffering in the air, it worsened as she walked.

  
  


She just had to get there. The depressed lighting from above lost its green tint and started turning red, by the time the crying felt merely feet away, the entire hallway was bathed in red lighting… None of it wanted to touch Toriel though, she refused to partake a single bit of it. She could start to make out screaming sounds from the crying.

The hallway had an end… It ended with a big iron door with a large  ** _6 _ ** painted on it, the door was sealed shut by excessive means. It was fettered by giant red chains held together by even redder padlocks, Toriel was immediately struck with the feeling that this door was never meant to be opened… but the child, they had to be behind it, the crying was so  _ close.  _ She came closer to the door, the bad feelings worsened with every step, she felt like something  _ really _ did not want her there. She felt  _ watched,  _ almost like a presence was upon her, an incredibly hostile one. Even when she turned around to gaze at nothing, there was a moment Toriel would catch a glimpse of two red dots behind one of the cells. Nevertheless… the door, the  _ child.  _

Through the binds and reinforcements, Toriel was able to peer through a narrow viewing window, finally awarding her with the source of the despairing child. The room was so dark… she almost couldn’t see what it held, but she saw the small shape huddled on the floor as it quivered and sobbed. She tried calling out to the child, but her voice was not with her, she couldn’t make a sound. Her only option would be to get the door open, to free them from their prison, Toriel gripped the crimson chain and pulled…

The child went silent with a subtle gasp, alerted by the rattling of the chain… the lights went out, everything was gone. Then… a  _ flicker,  _ something manifested in the place the mourning child once was.

Toriel was looking at herself, but  ** _r e d d e r . . . _ ** Her doppleganger looked to her and smiled, showing all those rows of shark teeth.

** _₮Ⱨ₳₦₭ ɎØɄ…_ **

It said… before unleashing an ear splitting screech and lunging at Toriel. 

** _9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999_ **

* * *

  
  


** _D̸̛̘́̇̇͘͝͝A̷͓̗͌̾R̶̤͙͇̥̜̱̞̳̗͠K̴̩͚̱͙̺̝̩͈̓.̶̨̳͚̹̤̿̎̅̐̆̏̄_ **

“- I have no idea how she got up here. Ee-e-everything’s blocked off. Sir…”

Nn- _ no!  _ She’s just like,  _ sitting  _ here! W-w-with his body, she’s like  _ comatose… _

- _ Right away,  _ Sir…

  
  


**Kill her.” **

  
  


A Beretta M-92 was manually cycled into action and pressed into the back of her head.

** _Õ̷̧͉͈̤̍̈́̍̅͜͠P̸̺͇͕̱̗̯̘̂̈̅͐͒̉̍̈́̀Ȩ̴̢̙̻̈́͊̌͐͜͠N̵͔͖̜̻͓̝̰̗͐͛̽̋͐̆͘.̶̪̾̊̄͗̾_ **

  
  


Unbeknownst to the man holding the gun behind her, Toriel slowly opened her eyes… The heterochromia was present in both of them. 

A blood curdling scream rang out, and as sudden as it started: it was cut off by the gunshot…

The other two soldiers there, they couldn’t see the man’s wrists  _ snapping,  _ they couldn’t see his hands being forced to turn around, pointing the gun in his outstretched arms into his own face. They didn’t see Toriel forcing him to pull the trigger,  ** _but they sure HEARD it. _ **   
  


  
  


[KILL THEM ALL](https://youtu.be/tY92NAdGaR4)

_ The body couldn’t even hit the floor. They couldn’t even reach for their WEAPONS, she pried the gun from the deadman’s mangled hands and shot both of his FRIENDS in their eyes.  _

_ They all fell down…  _

_ Toriel left the bodies behind and walked down the path, no rush, no hurry: they were already coming for HER, so it was MUTUAL. All she had to do was follow the trail of blood. _

_ More soldiers came from the turn ahead, they were trying to KILL her, TOO LATE. Funny how they had trouble with their big guns hitting her from so far away, but she had no trouble destroying one of their brains with a trio of bullets through his nose, and severing the other’s jugular artery from 127 yards with another three rounds from a PISTOL. His gurgling struggles died down when she approached them.  _

_ B̴̧̛̺̘̰͖̈́̈́̒Ų̶̢̳̤͍̥̱̬͘Ţ̶̮̪̤̄͐̇̍͗̆̾ ̴̢̮̟͎͎̬̟̜̬̏̂͊́̽̇́͘͜T̴̢̗̈́̎͒̅͝H̶̞̲̹̦̰̞̎͐̔́͊̕E̵͈̩̓̂̓͊̈́̎̃̚͝ ̸̱̫͎̤̝̐͘Ş̵̛̹͇̼̙̠͉͖̖͚͋́͗̾C̵̡̙̤̼̦͚̟͐͋͠R̶̹̺̲̙͍̦̼̝̘͗̑̅̑͛̚͝͠Ē̸̳̦̅̉͌̿͜͜ͅA̵͈͙͙͖̰͔̦̠̐̌̾̅͛͘͝M̸̘̫͈̟̆̈́̍͛̊͌́̆̍͆͜I̸̦̝̣̺̗͚̱͖͆̓͊̀́N̵̖̗̫̈́̓͒̑̈͝G̶̡̨̧̛̫͔̮͙̯̬̃̾̏̈́̚ͅ ̷̻̹̑̊̀͆̊̓̇̈́̽N̵̢͔͉̥̯͚̣͒̿̀̊̂E̶̡̛̘̓̐̽V̷̨̭̰̙̩̝̒̋͐̽̆͑E̶͓͉̮̼͐̆̂R̴̨̛̺͇̘̱͈̺̮̗͑͗̑̈́̾́̿̍͝ ̶̨̢̣̹̜̖̐̚S̸̛͍͗̈́̌̾̑̅͘̚ͅṰ̷̙̳͈̇̔̂̓̍͑͆O̴̺͍͇̬̕P̶͉͉̽̒̓̊̎̕͝P̷̨̢̛̜̰̫̱͎̗̝̈́͒̈̚͜E̴̡̪̻̅̐̑͒̒͠D̷̡̮̮̜͕̍ _

  
  
  


_ More came, More DIED, it wasn’t much of a walk to get HOME. She just had to step over the bodies.  _

_ A SCREAM rang from the house. _

_ “ _ ** _SHE’S COMING!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!” _ **

_ The poor soldiers was SCARED.  _

_ She could see one of the C̵͎̰̙̯̹͕̫͆̏̃̓͜ͅỌ̸̧̠͉̹̫̠̫̌̔̄̈́́̂W̸̭̖̲̤̋̿͜Ā̵͉̖͕̪͍͕̽̑̍̂̄̈́̆͝Ṟ̵͑͐͐̽̾̌̿͝Ḑ̴̱̃S̵̢̛͓̟̻͛̾̇̑̋̐͂̂̌ through the open window, trying to delay it by running down the stairs. He tumbled the rest of the way down as a bullet bore into his collarbone, his screams were louder than the others, they always were.  _

_ GOOD TO BE HOME. But the ‘guests’ didn’t agree so. A load of buckshot stuck Toriel from the kitchen, she was all too happy to return the favor, but all the gun in her grip did was *CLICK CLICK CLICK*  _

_ Piece of shit… _

_ The soldier heard the click and took it as V̸̰̝̤͈̮͆̃̔̏̈͝Ų̴͎̳̲̩͍͖͍̦̠̍̓͘L̵̡̜̳̮̮̣̙̝͎̜̑͐͠N̸̨̯̩̘̰̯̤͒͐̀̔̏͘͜E̶̪͙̓͋̄̌͗̕R̸̢̼̣͐̋̅͐͛͊̿A̵̡̖̥̺̹̳͈͗̅̅͂̈́B̴͖͔̈́̾̈͌̂͆̑͝͠͝Į̴̰̭̞̟͎̩̗̝̯͐̅̓̾̉̄͘̕L̷̡̢̼̬̦̬̞̎̂I̸̙̭̲̞̤̺̰̫͎͎̊T̸̨̛͈͖̤̬̯̍͂͗͋͋̇̓͑͠Y̷̙̽̚͜, it’s too bad the moment he ran out from his cover, Toriel was waiting for him right there. Oh, he TRIED to shoot her, but he found that to be impossible when a fist engulfed in RED flames punched in his soft cheek. _

_ T̵̝̻̃͌̑̒͌̈́͠͝͠H̷̥͔̓̆̋̅̃̄̊͗̎E̶̲͍̫͕̰͆͛́̀̃̓ ̴̬̠̙̘̰̻̥̑S̵͙̘͕̹̠̯͎̤̮̪̐̂̋̾͊̆̾̋̇͠C̵̙͎̀͆R̷̛̰̃̋͆́͘̚Ẹ̴̪͋̎͆̈͜A̶͓̤̮̐́͂̕͝Ṃ̸̼̹͊I̵̫͖̟͈̣̐̒͘͜N̶̟̺͇̓͊̑͐̄̂͐̕͜͝G̸̨̲̹͒̈́̓̿͒ _

_ The soldier found that he just HAD to cover his charring face, he just couldn’t be bothered to hold his  _ **BENELLI M1014 ** _ any longer. So Toriel picked it up and introduced the stock of the gun to the soldier’s head: again and again and again and  _ ** _again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN _ ** ** _AND AGAIN _ ** _ until he couldn’t complain about his face anymore because of MOST of it had melted onto the stock of the gun while she was caving his head in with it. Toriel took the shotgun with her and went downstairs. _

_ The one she shot earlier was still trying to get away. Blood trailed all the way from the landing to him as he tried to CRAWL AWAY. He SCREAMED for help, especially as Toriel stomped on his back and pinned him there. _

_ H̵̠̤̎̌̓̃̋͒E̸̢̿̍̀̈́̇̈́͘̚Ḻ̶̲̜̽͠͝P̸̡̨̢̧̠̜̥͎̯ ̸̖̯̌M̴̭͉̝̞̬̝̬̪̗̟̃͛̌̅̋Ê̴̼̠̺̹̙͋̅̈́͜  
_

** _B̸͕̘͚̲͇̯̋͑̑̓̈́̑̀͆͘͝ͅu̸̱̅̈́͐̇̔t̵̰̗͕̠̗͔̬̓̈́̍̈̐̿̂͌̒ ̷̗̰̊͂̓n̶͈͖̦̼̓͐̿ǫ̷̳͍̯̿̒͗̇̿͘b̷̧͖̦͉̻̏͂̈o̴̠͔̫̱͈͋̒̀͌ḑ̷̹̯̖͗͆̋̚͠y̴̧̺̭̬̞͇͇̑̓͑̃̚͜͝ ̷̙̞̪̗͂̒̒̕͝͝c̴̢͓͈̯̓̚ͅḁ̵̤̩͈͔̙͛m̸͚̪̼̟͕̳̈́̆e̵͔̜̖͓̞̅̚͠.̸͚͔̝̲̫͗͜͝.̷̡͓̱͒̽̃̇͐͐̈́̊.̷̡̛̯̟̍̀͂͗͘_ **

  
  


_ She let him scream one more time just to hear what denial and desperation sounded like, then she pressed the shotgun into the back of his head and blew it apart with a good  _ ** _-*SPLAT*- _ ** _ The red spattered onto her and just added to the rest. Toriel grabbed his  _ **M16a4 ** _ for her troubles…  _

_ They tried to make some pathetic stand against her on the other side of path overlooking the city they ransacked. A pair of sniper rifles punctured holes into her black cloak, her movement was not impeded and the soldiers retreated when they realized this… At least ONE of them was able to retreat, the others had some new holes in their heads to count.  _

* * *

“- WHAT THE  _ HELL  _ DO WE DO NOW,  ** _SIR?!” _ **

_ Judgement hall called out in terror, Toriel was steps away.  _

  
  


_ There were 26 men and women occupying the large room, 15 Assault Rifles, 5 Shotguns, 4 Sniper Rifles, and 2 Machine Guns: this was the last of them, all huddled together in their final moments. They didn’t hesitate to open fire the moment the blackened, smog emitting monster appeared in the doorway.  _

_ Six of them were cut down before the rifle went dry. _

_ Three of them fell before the shotgun fired its last shell…  _

** _Those were the lucky ones… _ **

  
  


_ What the rest of them would endure would be a wall of fire that swallowed the entire room within seconds. Every soldier was engulfed by the very RAGE that fueled her. The closest ones had disintegrated, leaving blackened skeletons to crumble apart where they once stood. The farthest ones tried desperately to put themselves out as they could feel their flesh melting off of their bones. _

** _They SCREAMED._ **

** _THEY SCREAMED AND SCREAMED, THE CHORUS WAS SO MUCH LOUDER THAN THE JETS OF FLAMES. HOW THEY WRITHED AND FLAILED IN AGONY. HOW THEY ENTICED HER TO MAKE THE FLAMES EVEN HOTTER._ **

_ They would NEVER be able to SAVE themselves, you couldn’t put out these flames: not while she WANTED them to KILL YOU SO  _ ** _S L O W L Y . . . _ **

_ But maybe Toriel got a little CARRIED AWAY. Putting EVERY last ounce of the sheer STRENGTH she now had into the artificial HELLFIRE… MORE.  _ ** _MORE. HOTTER AND HOTTER. _ ** _ Because it’s what they  _ ** _DESERVED_ ** . 

_ The screaming long stopped before Toriel could do so herself. When the flames were cut off, not a single utterance was heard. Every last of the soldiers were either reduced to a clutter of smoking bones or a pile of meat partially on fire and left to char. Just like all the piles, Judgement hall was no longer recognizable from what she did. Every surface was scorched black, all the stained glass windows had shattered from the heat, earth poured in from them. There was a dense layer of smog filling the room, with the smell of burnt hair and flesh.  _

_ Toriel wasn’t done yet, she had one last piece of business to attend to. Something TRULY to savor, best saved for last as she stepped through the burning piles sticking to the floor. Out of the room that smelled like comeuppance and burnt hair, and to the throne room…  _

_ It looked like there was a new room put in… but no no no… he wasn’t down those stairs. She could FEEL that he was in the throne room, or at least what was left of it.  _

_ Toriel started stepping through the massive heap of ashes that took the entire floor, and she strolled right into the room. Just as she turned to get a GOOD look at him- the sound of a shotgun blowing half of her head off made everything go black…  _

_ There was ONE soldier left, the same one who greased her up with his sweet little lies and heaping bullshit, the very one who orchestrated all this…  _

** _“₱₳łⱠɄⱤ₦…”_ **

_ She uttered that name with the deepest kind of utterance, the kind you could hear the fires of hell being stoked for your arrival. He shot shot her point blank with that gun until everything above her shoulders was gone, so quickly too! D̴̨͓̤̿̈́̅̈́͐͑̕E̸̡̡̨̠̳̻̫͍̅̏̈́́͐̚͝ͅS̵̞͎̜̥̻͍̽̾̒̏͜͝P̵̨͍͓̟̯͕̤̿̾̿͗̓̈̓̚͜E̵̙̥̠͕̤̒̑̽̈́̃̑͊Ȓ̴̢͎̤͈̰͙͉̦͖̋͂A̷̧͉̤̭̜͇̠̒̅T̶̘͇̙̿̉̈́͋̉͋̂̚͜͝Ȩ̶̻̤͖̪̲̦̼̏̿͗̆̈́̑͘̕͝, just how she liked it.  _

_ Toriel did not fall…  _

_ She didn’t even stumble or flinch from the impacts…  _

_ The hole above her neck began to spurt RED, it spurted into the air for a second, and then began running like a bleeding vein… More geysers began to form from her. _

_ Pailurn was smart enough to start shooting again, blasting big chunks of Toriel’s body away… He just wasn’t wise enough to realize it wasn’t going to work. The RED started to harden and shape like liquid pouring into a special glass. The new ‘damage’ he inflicted on her did the same, they closed up before he could even reload. Gradually, the features reformed as the new head finished rebuilding itself… but it also ADAPTED. Toriel was BETTER than new, now with three additional EYES and a layer of ARMOR to keep this little SETBACK from happening again.  _

** _Toriel could finally see the man she SO wanted to… and it made her SMILE._ **

“Oh,  _ fuck  _ this!” 

_ The captain ran away... out the back of the room…  _ _ Toriel LET him run away… She was going to take her time catching up to him too… Let him fester a bit. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to GO anytime soon.  _

_ She stepped on a tattered crown as she ‘pursued’ Pailurn… Of course Asgore was DEAD. He was weak… But speaking of: The raging fires inside of Toriel were beginning to die down. She was almost out of fuel. Hatred made for a brilliantly bright burn… but it seldom lasted long, she just had a LOT of it to make all this possible. But it wouldn’t be long now until… Well, there was no need to spoil it. _

_ THERE he was… It was funny, as she walked ever so closer, Toriel saw a legion of corpses stacked against the walls, some were in bags and others were crudely covered by their own blood soaked jackets. And on the other side of the room was PAILURN, getting to experience what it was like being TRAPPED by the BARRIER. How apt that he would get to die surrounded by all of his dead ‘children’.  _

_ He scratched at the arcane creation like a trapped rat, frantically tuning his head back to see Toriel inching ever so closer. This must have been what it felt like for all the nightmares and monsters haunting dreams… to see the victims itching around, HELPLESSLY.  _

_ Pailurn gave up on the barrier and brought out his sidearm. Just as Toriel took her time walking up to him, did he with his shots. The 50. Caliber handgun filled the room with thunder and ringing bells. Every shot was like a period building an ellipse, it felt like time had stopped to give this moment the finality it wanted. Pailurn fired all but his last round… Toriel was towering over him, motionless… the smog fuming from her was the only thing that moved. _

_ He glared right into her, never making a sound. His expression never broke, despite the beads of sweat running down his face. Toriel glared right back down at him, blinking each of the new eyes individually.  _

_ Spontaneously, Pailurn whipped his arm and placed the barrel of the Desert Eagle against his head. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger as fast as he could. _

** _*CLICK!*_ **

_ The metallic sound echoed through the room, the final period on his sentence… He had no more say in what would happen now. _

“What the  _ Fff _ uck…” 

_ His eyes widened just enough, his voice cracked too… He KNEW he only counted 7 shots out of 8… He and Toriel both did. He looked to her, and Toriel held out her blood soaked arm. Her viscera covered claws opened up, and an unfired bullet rolled out of her grip and tinkled against the ground before it melted into a puddle of brass and lead, the primer popped like a firecracker.  _

  
  
  
  


“ _ OOohhhh.  _ ** _Fffuck me…” _ **

_ He let the gun fall to the ground with a clatter. _

** _Å̶̡̯̝̘͈̀͐͑͌C̵̛͖̯̫̆̈̈́͑̚͠C̶̡̨̝̼͔͓̃́̌̊̿̐̀̈́̌͠E̶̡̞̦͍̠͔̝̣̊̽̾̂͘͠ͅP̶̧͇͓̦̼̪͉̣̙̥͆̑͗̐͂T̸̟̦̗͕̳̺̊͂̆̆͑̍͒͘Ȧ̷̪͛̏̕N̷̨̳̯̬̰̹̭͔̅̏̚͜C̶̗͙̱̤̋̉͊̓̐̈́̚Ę̵͍͖͔̦̬̲̹̊͛͋̈́̓̀̑̏͝_ **

  
  
  
  


[DIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raYnwu_yGmM)

_ Toriel snatched him by his throat, Pailurn struggled but he didn’t fight her or thrash much. Toriel lifted him off his feet and slowly rose him into the air, putting a strain on his windpipe and listening to the guttural sounds he made trying to breathe. She held him up in the air and watched for his face to turn blue and just as Pailurn would pass out from the asphyxiation, Toriel reared her other arm…  _ ** _and PLUNGED it into his chest. He made a very feeble sound, something barely distinguishing from a pained gasp. _ ** _ Toriel then released him and threw the man aside to the floor.  _

_ He would realize that apart from a bruise forming on his neck, he was  _ ** _FINE. _ ** _ What she had done to him, hadn’t wounded him at all, there was no laceration or bleeding… not even pain- _

_ He looked back to her, struck by utter confusion… _

_ - _ ** _Because no… That would be too MERCIFUL for him. Pailurn got to see a reddish looking caricature of a heart grasped in Toriel’s grip and without warning, without hesitation to let him REALIZE what it WAS: Toriel turned and THRUST her arm into the Barrier. The SOUL impeded her movement and struck the barrier with a small burst of like like a red SPARK. _ **

** _Pailurn made this horrible sound from the impact, it sounded deep and incredibly painful: he lost his balance and fell down to his knees, clutching his chest as if his heart had been stabbed by a knife. Toriel looked him DEAD in his eyes with the SOUL in her grip and she SMILED AT HIM. Then she pounded the SOUL into the BARRIER again and again. Every Time was with more strength and ferocity than the LAST. _ **

** _The human convulsed and spasmed with every strike, he grew weaker with every one. Toriel could FEEL the SOUL starting to FRACTURE, her arm became FASTER and FASTER. Pounding the SOUL into the barrier at such a rapid pace, the guttural sounds from behind her were now constant and without lapse or MERCY. SHE JUST KEPT SLAMMING IT INTO THE WANTON CREATION BEFORE HER OVER AND OVER-_ **

_ The soul disintegrated in her grip like sand… Its dust sifted from between her relaxing claws and dispersed onto the floor. Pailurn no longer existed… he wasn’t DEAD, he was just an empty vessel laying limp on the floor. Just like that, as he had destroyed her life… Toriel had destroyed his.  _

_ They were all dead… it was over: Toriel won. She stared at that soulless husk on the floor and a giggle formed from her smile. The giggle grew into a full on a laugh, a hysterical cackle that filled the halls of the dead. She howled with mad laughter… and just as her excitement would turn into full on screams… the last flame inside of her was starved of the hate that created it and it went out… _

  
  
  
  


_ _


	9. The beast who lingered

The haze of smoke and anger was clearing, Toriel could confine herself to the bounds of reality once more. It felt like waking up from a very deep nightmare but she couldn’t remember _ anything. _Everything was still tucked away behind the fogginess: it was intense though, the feelings were still lingering and it felt the worst kind of heavy. 

“What happened?” 

The first thought as the world tried to stop spinning. She remembered being somewhere else… and _ redness _ , a mirror too maybe. _ No… _ it wasn’t that, it was another _ her, _ the image was so _ vivid _ compared to everything else… Maybe it was because she was _ looking _at herself again. 

She and the red doppelganger were sitting in front of the _ barrier. _ Toriel could remember the barrier from the dream as well as the red visage… but it couldn’t be. The red monster before her was wearing a big smile. The more Toriel woke up, the more she could see how _ derformed _it was but also the more it was starting to fade away. It giggled deviously at her-

**Ṭ̴͚̞͔͚͎͚̻̮̒h̴͍̟̠̪͑͛ͅā̷̧̲̱̠̙̞̇̂̆͛̓͆̍͌͜t̵̨̖͈̝̦̫̔͋͆̐ ̵̱̦̣̘̤̋̓̚w̸͕̦͔̐̈́̅̈́͊̉̇̌̏͝ā̷̡̯̖̬́̌͆̈́̇͊̚͝s̵̮͂ ̷̢͓̱̗͎̃̈́͑̊͌̂̏̎͠F̸̨̪̼͍̯̈́̿̂Ụ̷̰̮̍̈́N̵̨̡̗͉̯̞̈́̾̐͋̋̑̚͜.̵͔̘̥̪̖̰̫̜̤̍͗̎̉̆̈́̋.̴̨͔̤̣͆̔̚̚.̵̜̹͚̗̗̙̏̌̇̽̅͊̕͠**

  
  


“_ Wwait!...” _

Toriel groaned and tried to take a step closer, but an influx of sensations kicked in and held her down. The visage vanished, a ghost nowhere to be seen now. Toriel wasn’t even concerned with that now: everything ** _hurt, _ ** she felt this horrible throbbing sensation inside her that wouldn’t stop. She felt so _ sick… _ felt like something was moving inside of her, up to her head… she fell back to the ground and hacked something out, like a human would do. But why? There was a glob of burning RED on the ground… it came from _ her _ and she soon realized there was more of it on her. Her arms and legs were _ soaked _ in blood! Her claws, they had grown into these ghastly gnarled looking daggers that were stuck with bits of _ something. _

Nothing felt right, her head was like a thousand pieces of broken glass floating around in a whirlpool the only thing that persisted other than the _ pain _ was the overwhelming sensation that something was _ WRONG, _not ‘something’: HER. 

She tried to stand up again, but she was now stopped by her _ face. _ Her vision blurred out, she could feel her face _ ‘moving around’, _her eyes especially. It hurt so much and when she covered it with her mutated claws, she could feel it shifting and deforming. Her vision cleared, but it was now onto the next discovery. The moment she could see again, Toriel was met with the body of the captain. 

She was suddenly overcome with the strongest aversion. A dying ember inside of her was fanned and glowed brightly. She couldn’t push it out of her mind how much she _ HATED _him. How much he deserved the fate she had given him…

How… how she had done this to him.

“No. _ No! _ It was not _ real!” _

Yes it was, every time she slammed his fracturing SOUL into the barrier synched with the throbbing inside of her, the percussion still echoed in her ears. The fogginess was dissipating… just when she would have begged for it to come back. 

Toriel started yelling in denial, it was too horrible to be real… the same kind of horrible that couldn’t let this invasion ever happen or to cut down an innocent little boy. But finding one body wouldn’t be enough to get through to her. Finding _ more _of them all stacked on top of each other, just like she remembered, would be a big strain on her denial. Toriel ran away from the barrier and its terrible contents. 

“_ Please! STOP THIS!! _

** _STOP!” _ **

She tried to wash the blood from herself, but it wouldn’t go away_ . _ She tried to make the crying and screams stop, but they wouldn’t go _ away. _They wouldn’t stop, not now, not ever. She ran away to the glow of the grand hall but the light beaming through the windows was long gone… the fires illuminated the smoke billowing from the room, it carried the foul stench of death. 

This large room… it was the site of many chunks of bodies with bones ridden of flesh, they were all still _ smoldering _ with remnants of the incredible heat that ravaged them. _ Most _of the room had been destroyed by fire damage, save for a sliver of it that retained its color by the entrance opposite of her. Blood soaked and partially singed corpses littered it.

She looked to her claws, they were so _ bloody _ and the fur was singed _ black… _yet the imprint in the shape of a SOUL still stood out on her palm, while numerous unexplained fires burned on, defying the laws of physics given to fire itself.

“No. no _ no.” _

Toriel kept repeating herself, sounding more despairing with every ‘No’ as she dared to cross the room, doing everything she could to avoid staring into the _ ‘piles’... _ nevermind that _ she _ was also charred. There just _ couldn’t _ be a correlation… but she couldn’t tell herself that. She just… Toriel just needed something to assure her that… _ No. _

Over the sound of the crackling flames and deep muffled rumbles from below, Toriel could pick up a kind _ sniffling _ sound, like someone struggling to breathe… as in someone who was _ alive. _ It partially sobered her from the terrible haze she was in, clearing her immediate thoughts enough to focus. Yes… she could _ feel _a presence nearby but it was so weak. She found it so much easier to overlook all the burnt meat on the floor as she hurried to the source of the presence. It sounded like someone was in pain.

One of the blood soaked corpses, she could see it twitching and shivering. A ‘corpse’ missing half of a leg and with perforated entrails slopping out of a massive evisceration… the armor didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t matter if they were a soldier, Toriel was about to do everything she could to help them… but then the soldier noticed her. 

They made a feeble gasp… their pale face widened in terror for a moment.

“_ N-N-nn-n-NHn.. Nnh-no-n-” _

The soldier sputtered and whimpered weakly, hacking and coughing blood from their mouth and nose. Toriel crouched down and tried to prepare her claws with healing magic, but the look on the soldier’s face….

They started choking on their own panicked wheezes, hyperventilating but gaining no air to their punctured lungs. They tried to _ back away _ from Toriel. Despite bleeding beyond _ profusely, _the soldier took their hands away from the wounds and tried to drag themselves away from her. The sound of pain in them as they did this… they started to cry within their own gasps for air. They were afraid of her. 

She couldn’t move, Toriel was stuck where she was as this forced the implications into her. The immense fear in this dying human’s face… In _ all _ of their faces. Their cries of agony as they were immolated. Every last man and women in this room, brutally cut down without a chance or mercy, done so swiftly to exaggerate the irony in the sins they had committed. It was _ her _.

Toriel was never able to comprehend the thought of using magic to harm anyone, but she had just slaughtered everyone without mercy. She could _ feel _each of their lives being snuffed out, feeling herself tearing it all away from them. She so desperately wanted to think it wasn’t her… that this was all the work of the red nightmare she saw, but no. It was her that did this, it was her own rage and despair that condoned her actions. All this SOUL had done to her, was make them so much louder… so loud that she couldn’t see or hear anything else than her own fury. She lost herself, and this blood covered monstrosity is what found its way back. This was the monster who the soldier feared, who the humans feared all those years ago… 

The wounded soldier’s gasps and whimpers became very silent, they succumbed to the injuries Toriel inflicted on them.

  
  


They were all dead. The monster had won the battle. It was over. 

  
  
  


With LOVE in her soul and blood on her claws, the monster fell to her knees and screamed. Her shrieks would only be heard by the dead as they lingered for hours. These weren’t mere cries of anguish or pain, but instead they were the sounds of the remnants of her own soul dying. Toriel was dead and this abomination was all that was left. The monster had screamed and screamed until there was nothing left to scream with, all the feelings had gone with her original self… through this entire experience though, she never shed a single tear.

So… what now? What was there to do when the dust had settled in anticipation for the bigger cloud that would arise from the death of the Underground? The monster had one sole desire to her existence now, one last piece of business. _ She owed Brainz that much. _

[Nothing left but a monster.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prDoGmY5kj8)

The monster got to her feet and trudged through the remainder of the room, going back in the same destructive steps she took while there was life in here. She plodded through the view of the desolated city, everything was gone. 

Back up the steps and through the house, it would never be ‘Home’ again. The empty rooms and halls held nothing but painful memories and bad experiences. She left it all behind and walked until she found Brainz: he was sprawled onto the ground from where she dropped him. The monster gently brought him back into her arms, cradling what was left of him in her arms. She picked him up, and doubled right back. The monster carried Brainz’s remains through the carnage and brought him before the barrier. She took one final look behind, at the lifeless captain on the ground, and became the second monster to leave the underground carrying the lost in their arms. 

The monster walked through a small cavern and up a set of stone stairs that hadn’t been used in over a thousand years… as the hole at the top of the cave grew nearer as did the twilight that filled the barrier room… The monster could hear something from outside, from the _ surface. _ She kept walking and walking until finally, her torn feet stepped upon _ grass, _ real grass. She looked up and, hiding through the scattered canopy of living trees: the moon stared at everyone basking in its glow. She was out, _ they _… were out. 

Suddenly, something _ roared _ from across her view, bringing its loud humming and buzzing into relevancy. There were more sounds, loud and jarring echoing from all over. She would recognize the noises as the songs of helicopter rotors… A dozen or even _ more _of them circling the entire 

mountain and lighting it up section by section with the gaze of their search lights.

It may have been dark, but she had a perfect view of the land below the mountain, the monster could see a _ village _at the foot of the mountain… even the paths and roads that connected it with the rest of the world. She could see all of it… illuminated by the lights of the apache attack helicopters flying for the mountain while troop carriers and tanks followed closely behind on the ground. She could sense them all, departing from their vehicles and bolstering their formations… The presence was ten times as strong as the troopers who ravaged the underground, ten times as many soldiers and growing as the convoys entering the valley seemed to lack an end. 

They were coming and they were coming for _ her… _ What happened behind the barrier, that was just a _ battle, _ this was a ** _war. _ ** Nothing was over, they wouldn’t stop: not now, not _ ever. _ She could kill every last one of them and another two thousand would take their place. That’s what she could’ve done, it’s what she _ had _to do to keep going.

  
  
  
  


_ C̷̛̛̘͛̈́̉̄̌̉́̂̅̃̂̐͂̕͝ơ̸̡̡̖̣̦̗͎͍̠̙̟͔̩̟̙̞̭͉͌́̋̍͒͌̂͋̈́͋́̌̃͌̏͛͌͐̑͒͠͝͠ͅm̷̨̖̥̭̠̼͇͎̫̟͔͙̬͊̂̃̋̓̿̍̀̒͑͛̊͐͒̇͑̈́̍̈́̀̚̚͝͝͝e̶̡̡̜̳̱͓͙͕̠̩͈͇̝͓̯̫̥͇͘͜͜ͅ ̵̻̤͙̞̯̟̺͈̦̙͎̹̽̒͗́͂̍͂̐̀̾̎͊͋̎̌͒̈̒̇̄͘͠͠͠ô̷̮̝͇͈͚̼̦̽̉̑͒̿͊̏̓̓̊͠ñ̵͕̦̫͎̻̫̣̺̬̪̺̖̞̥͜,̷̢̨̹̻̞̼͇͚͉̰̠͈̳̱̭̻̩̼̝̳̤͓̈͠ͅ ̸̡̢̢̢̡̛̛̬̟̠̲̹͚͕̯̗͓̼̙͖̭͕̯̣̘̓̌̒̌̒̓̅̄͑̃͛̀͐͋͊̄͆̒̅̋͜͝͝ͅ. ̸̭̐ẃ̸͈e̶̦̍ ̸̈͜c̵̘̒ǎ̴̼ń̸̡. ̷k̴e̴e̶p̸ ̵p̴l̵a̸y̷i̵n̴g̷.̸̝̾ _

_ ̷̫̿T̴̬̏h̵͙̉ě̷̖s̸͈ë̶̙́. ̶͙͂ö̷̤́n̶̺͒e̵̘̐ṣ̴͗. ̸̞͝a̵͖͌r̵̨̛e̸̪̊. ̶̗͊ĵ̸̲ů̵͚s̷̖͗t̵̮̉ ̶̦͗t̴͚͘h̵̬ê̵͓ ̴̀ͅ š̴̺m̸̤͊â̶̯ĺ̴̙l̴̨̉ ̴͉ s̵͎̕t̴̬̾u̶̠͝f̸̺͊f̷̥͘.̵̨̍ _

_ ̴͇̈́D̴͚̚ò̸͎n̶͛͜'̸̭̋t̷̘͋. ̶̱͒y̴̩̆o̸̪͌ȕ̶̺ ̸̞̀ w̷̥̕a̵͇͐n̴͈̒t̶̥͒ ̴͔͆ t̷̠͝ȏ̵͔. f̴i̷n̴i̴s̶h̸̵̭̆. t̷̡̡̨̪̥̲̬͙̬͖̺͎̭̞̭͍̍̈́̿͒͒͌̾͂̈́͊̔̾́͆̂̾̓̌̐̄́̕͝ȟ̴̢̼̼̥̐̀̌̌̒̀̃̋̂͆̑͂͆̇̓̍͗̎̌̚͝͠͝í̶̢̛̛̮̱̊̇̃͒̓̍̐͂̒̃͑̈́̅̾̈́͜s̷̡̻̘̟̗̞̗̣̠̹̝̟̹̝̑̈̽̊̋̃̌̌̀͗̓͐̈́͝?̷̠̐ _

  
  
  


_ ̴̠̭̼̩̟̬̖͚̈̇̓̇̂ͅT̸̡̛͕̖̬̱̭̮̫͍̬̞̬̗̰͍̙̙̘̪͑̀͐́̈́͋̈̑̂̍̚̚̚͝͠͝h̷̦̆͊͐̒̍̈́̏͒̂̈́͗̽͘͝E̷̢̨̨̙̳̙̱͕͖͈̟̘̯͎͇͔̰͖̳͚͍̅̽̒̿̀̓̄̒̒̌̇̇̋̒͛̒͋̓͑͜͝͝y̷̞̹̩̱̘͖̘̥̜͆̊͐̓̇̂̐̂̏͐̆̽͊̐̽͘̚ ̵̠̿̈̍̂d̸̢̛̛̛͔̆̋͛̐͋̍̃̌͑̑̽́̚͘͝Ë̶̡̘̲͍̰͎͕̦̟̣͓̱̫̬̙̲̠͙̘̹̪́͌̑͂̓̓̇͋̏̈́͐̓͑͒ş̶̨͔͔̺͈̮̰͍̠̗̩̺̺͖̫̭̮͋͐́̈̈́̄̓̄͐̈̀͗̈́̿̀͐̾̒͋̐̆̎͘͘͜ͅͅͅĘ̴̧̙̰͚̼̙̯̻͖̝̺͖͚̗͇͔̄̊́̾́͆̓͂̔̃͆̊̓̇͘͝͠͠͝ͅṛ̵̡̧̡͎̫̺̙̟̹̮̳̙̩͕̮͓̦̳̩͙̪̱̎̾̆͑̍̄͆̈́͒͊͛͒̽̈́̎͝͝͝ͅV̸̨̡̨̧͎͚͎̲̬͇͇̫̳̖̼̯͍̮͍̬̘̝̔͆̓͌̎͌ͅe̷̛͖̲̅̈́́̎̃͊͂ ̷̢̢̨̛̱̝̱̯͐͑̈́̉̾̈́̈͆̏͋̚͠P̷̢̯͕̩̩̙͖̗̩͈̻̱͋̏̽̈̈́̈́̃͗͘͘ͅa̴̫̦̠̔͑̈́̾̊ͅỊ̶̢̧̳̫̹̼̮͈̟͉̫̊̃͂͗̀̎͌N̶̡̞̣͑ _

_ ̸̛̩̮̹̭͚̪͈͕̭͚͕̱͉͔̼̮͖͔̤̫͉̗̭̍̏̌̓̆͐̍̉̊͑̏̿̉̂̚̕͜͝͝͠ _

_ A heavy soul, burdened with pain and took it all in. The possibilities were endless. Revenge could be hers. _

_ The blood trickled down her cheek with a single tear. _

_ Redredredred _

  
  
  


_ The RED lingered. The RED watched. The RED was c u r i o u s. _

_ Ẃ̸̢̡̢͔̝̺̙͇̼̠̥͎͔͉̙͚͍͍͚̖̻̻̺̤̠̥͍͚͓̤̝̆́̇͒̽̆̒͂̍͌͐͋̓̉̇̄͂̍̏̓̐͌̅̇̋͌̄͘͠ͅh̷̨̘͓̞̯̥͍̪̣͙̦̖̤͎̬̯͔̻̰̗͙̳͍̪̫̱͓̼̺̼̟̫̬̥̐̅̃̍͆͌̎̔̏̽̎͒͑̌͒̽͒̒̍̑͑͘̚̕͠͝͝ͅǎ̷̢̧̯̣̠̝̣͔͇͙̟͕̻̩̐̎̈́̈́͒̍́̈́͛̃͑̔͐͌̑̔͆̑͛̋̕̚͜͝ṱ̷͇̖̪͈́̒̉̂́̿͗̂̋̎͋̿͐̆͆͊́͛͒̽͌͘͝͝͝ ̸̨̧̪̞̟̭̻̳̥̙̖̖̜͓̮̻͎͖͎̹͎̟͈̤̙̰̲̳͇̬̲̇͑́̐̈́̎͊̆̄̓̑͋͊̍͐̌͌̑͒̾́̽̚͘̚͘͜w̶̢̡͓̪̰̭̪͓̠̜͉̳̳̫̯̪̭̺̤̩͚̰̖̻̦̮͔̫̱̘͓̼̻͉̫͍͉͚̐̓͋̏͐̔͂̾̓͑̈́͒͋͂̂͊̌̌͐͆͘͘͠͝ͅi̷̡̡̡̛̮̥̞̠̩̳͓̲͈͙͈͕͓͎̝̪̤͎̮͎̰̘̲͂̉̍͛͊̓͊̄͊͛̈̂̔̿̓̋̈̽̂̌̚̕͘͝͝ͅl̴̡̨̢̢̢̛̘̼̰̟̝̲̘̹̺̲͚̜̻̳͈͎͈̣̟̤̻̬̬͈̺̭͖͈̰̦̓̋̈́̎̎͐̋̿͊͒͑̈́͑̀̃̇̓͒̋̍̈͋͜͝͠͠l̸͉̠̹̑͂̔͆͑͒̀͋͛̈́̆̌͋͌̂̿̄̃̎͂̊̐́̚̕͝͠͠ ̵̭̜̔̑y̶͓̣̠̖͚̱̠̩̗͍͓͚͍͇̻͚͖̲͕̩͎̥̲̰̏͐̿̈́̎̇͐͂̈́̓͋͆͑̓͠͝ö̸̻̞͇̼̩̪̝̖̭̈͑̍̏̈́̈́̅̂̉̿͛̎̃̆̅̽̆͊̚ư̶̢̧̥̭̮̮̫͍͉̦͍̫̹͙͛̇̿͊̇̈̓̈̔̑̾͂̄̎̄͂̐͊̒̔͗̃̆̽̂̏͑̓̒̂̌̋̔͌̆̕͘͠͝ ̴̘̠̦̲͇̲͎̖͔̫͉̮̰̳̬̭̙̉̇d̸̢̨̡̧̡̼͕̺͉̩͙͕̺̱̻͔̣͙̯̙̘̗̘̤͚͓͉͛̈́͑̅͊̍̀̄͑̓̔̑̐̌̇̇̂̃̐͗̀̒̄̔͂̋̌̀͊͐̓͘̚͠͝͝͠o̵̖̰̭̱͎̓̄̈́̔̓̿̌̋̐̍͘͠,̸̨̡̭̝̠̼̱̲̱̝͓̩̗͉͙͌͋̆̀͛̀͆̎̅̍̆͋̈́͌̒͆͗̏̎͑͌͛̀̾̉͘͠͝͝͠ ̶͇̼̬͑͌w̶̧̠͉͙͇̬͍̺̼̭̏̊͋̇̐̏̏͌̂̇̔̉̉͋̑̉̑͂̋͒̉̐͊̆̅́̑͆͠͠͠h̸̨̡̢̛̫͖͙͉̖͔̭͔̲̖̪͈͔̥̜̗͕͕͓͖̱̫̦̥̭̯̖̣̯̱̰̩̘̯̻̞̩̏̌̃̿͌̎̌̊̅̐̿̒̒̈̑̀͂̑̊͆̚̕e̵̢̡̢̧̨̛̩̬̥̠͔̞̦̻͙̤̗͕̩̦̙̜̭͔̣͕͙͕̬͙̝̟̼͙͇̬̮̬̣̤̪̤͉͐̈́̑̏̿̈́̔̊̄̐̈́̓͌̏͒͛ͅn̸̡̨̢̧̙̠͎͖͉͓̝̫͚̮̪͉̦̞̳͍͙̗̞͔̗̱͕̟͉̳̺̯͓̹̹͉̲͚̲͓̆̆̇̋́̈̓̚̕̚ͅ ̸̡͕͇̳̭̝̦̥̤͓̯̼̯̘̭̘̈͐́͑̈͊̍̇̓̅͒͂͌̃́͋͋̊̄͌̐̓͐̈͑̂̉͒̀͜͠͠ͅa̶̢̛͈̳͚̪̥͓̫̥̭͉̜̟̞̰͛̽̂̈͋̆͐̈̂͋̏̓́̔̃̆̆͒̍̓̇͂̔̓̏̂͐̆̑͌͘̕͜l̸̯̀̽̾͗͂͊̓͛͐̀̓̋̇̅̈́͊̿l̷̨̛̘̤̣͎̰͇͓̲͎͖̹̄̀̈͌̋̋̔͂̐̀̉͐̂̈̓̌̂̋͆̈́͗̿́̒̚͠͝͝ ̷̛͇͙̘͇̲̋͐̈́̎͗̋͑͜i̵̢̧̢̢̢̨̲̬̲̫̗͕͕̺̯̦͓̺̼̼̗̲̺̭͚͕̥̅͌̋́̇̇̒̑̅̔͒͑̐̾̋̿̿͋̈̌̀͛̚͘̚̚͜͝͝͠͠ͅͅș̶̡̡̡̝̱̟̱̹̜͕̦͓̱͕̙̙̲͕̻̦̘͍͉͉̘̬̦̟̩͇̣̃̈́̓͋̾̈́̽͊͊͐̋̔̇̕͠͝ ̷̧̧͕͖̫͖̖̩̘̭̟̳̖͙͕͎̖͙̬̺̬͎͚̝̭͙̹̥͕̗̥̪͖͉̳̘̽͐̀̔̏̒̓̄͗͗̀́̉̍͂̕͜͜ļ̷̨͎̺͕͚̝̟̮̖̖̞̩̝̰͔̙̎̈̐̾̎̈́͋̀̽̈͘̕͝ơ̶̢̨̡̢̤͚̯͚̼͕̤̰̭̬̦̹̰̗͖͈͓̟͖͍̹͖̩̝̮͓͔̌̈͛͑̆̏̓̏̽̍͊̈́̄̄̆̄̓̆͐̒́͛͘͘̕͝s̵̨̨̟̘͚͉̺̦̰̫̥͔̺̭̹͗̊̚t̶̖̮̫͙̀̈́̓̑͂͊̉͋̌́̏̐̀̓̎̌͘͠ͅ?̶̡̡̲͈̯̦̤̳̳̺͔̃͛̓̉͛̅̒̅̋̈́͊͌̄̉ _

_ ̶̨̧̩͈̦͎͎̖̥̱̖͖̰̘̹̫̰̥͇̳̙̱̭̝̜̥̻́̉̿̑̊͂́̎́͑̎͂́̃̆̐̓̿͛͒͆̈́̒́͋̉̋͂͛́̐̊̎̄͝͝͠͝ _

  
  


_ It’s ALL their FAULT. _

_ Make them PAY. _

_ Make them feel the pain they’ve caused. _

_ Don’t stop. _

_ NEVER stop. _

_ Hit them HARDER. _

_ Make them SUFFER. _

_ KILL THEM ALL… _

_ ... _

**But she refused… **

The demons tugged on her limbs and sang their wicked tunes in her ears… they promised everything would turn out OK in the end if she just held on longer, an absolution just waiting for her.

But she knew it wasn’t going to come… all she would be doing is running from the inevitable judgement, making it bigger and hungrier with every additional life she took. 

  
  


_ N o. _

_ She couldn't change what she had done.. But she r e f u s e d to do more harm. _

_ This was not for her. _

_ This was not for them. _

_ It was time to go HOME. _

_ And reunite.. _

_ ..with the ones she used to love… _

So the monster turned around… she had seen enough of what the surface brought, and sought to return to the cave. Just as she began walking back, a light far narrower and brighter than the moon’s surrounded her. There was shouting, the roar of the machines became so much louder as they were drawn to the site of the ‘hostile’ on the face of the mountain. The thunder of rapid gunfire saw her back into the dark world from which she emerged, it _ hurt… _but it didn’t matter.

  
  


She walked with Brainz back down the ancient steps, providing the second set of bloodied footprints on the cold surface. Back through the confines of the barrier that wouldn’t trap anyone anymore… And her final destination still stood in a room full of desecrated flowers. 

The monster carefully laid Brainz’s body down. She would sit with him, never leaving him again, together until she couldn’t exist any longer and passed away while the rest of her world did the same just moments later…

00:00:03

00:00:02

00:00:01

** [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKpULiVXX0E&feature=youtu.be) **


	10. Heartache.

["Hush my child. Stay with me..."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX-8P36kSJE&feature=youtu.be)

[THE END*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_mu2Zj3Pow)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *But it refused....


End file.
